


Out There, Where The Waves Land

by Winterhawk616



Category: Marvel, Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: Age Difference, Angst, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Isolation, Lighthouses, M/M, Medical Inaccuracies, Seaside, Temporary Amnesia, Trauma, assumed infidelity, emetophobia warning, pinning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:27:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 33,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27121774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winterhawk616/pseuds/Winterhawk616
Summary: Bucky Barnes had been the keeper of the Northern Isles’ only lighthouse for a decade now and had grown used to the solitude that life brought. But one morning he wakes up after a storm to find a fishing boat in pieces on the harbour and a young man’s lifeless body strewn over the rocks. With no one else around and the storm circling back towards the isle, Bucky takes the man in and begins to nurse him back to health.When Clint wakes up, hours later, he has trouble remembering anything but his name and Bucky is tasked with helping the man, with eyes as beautiful as the ocean, remember who he is and how to get back home.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Clint Barton
Comments: 56
Kudos: 47





	1. Chapter 1

From where he stood, he could see the isles that led to the mainland all scattered among blue-green waves like stars in the sky. A sprinkling of boats tethered to harbours off vacant ports and the few white brick cottages that grew grey from the winds and the salt. Everything was tiny and far out, but the clearness of the evening was in his favour. His hands stung from the coldness of the air as he leaned over the railing of the lighthouse, the tall white pillar signal in the middle of the isles, and took in the sights he had grown well acquainted with but not yet bored of. Closing his eyes against the unusual brightness of the sky at nine at night we wondered how he coped in the darkness of the mainland all those years. A gull's cries were like music, in harmony with the wind and falling into the beat of the waves. It was never silent, even in the dead of night when the darkness finally came, for the wind and sea was a companionship you could count on when left alone on the isle with just your thoughts for company. Inside his little snowglobe, with only himself and paper cut into pieces and a facade of life to keep him company. 

Counting through to thirty the sunset before his misty eyes and fell beneath the earth in a crescendo of waves. A moment of grief for the light cried out amongst the isles and then suddenly the sun was replaced by its artificial counterpart. It shone his shadow out into the waves and reminded the few people who could see it that no, the world had not come to an end, just the day, and it promised, silently, that it would begin again soon but until then it would lead them through the hollow night. 

He had his tasks that took up the next hour or so before he would lock up for the evening and as he collected up his tools from the old fence, he had spent the evening mending, he felt the first droplet of rain. He glanced skywards for a sign of a storm, but the air was clear, and the stars shone brighter than they ever had. A few clouds floated by but nothing to worry the old hand. He made a note to radio the mainland for a weather update before he set up for the evening but even as the rain grew heavier, he didn't think to worry. He was sat watching the water boil on the stove when the first rattle of thunder broke through the humdrum of the rain. He abandoned the pot and almost flew up the stairs to the gallery, he threw open the door and was hit by the full force of the storm. The skies were clear, no fog in sight but the wind was howling, and the rain spun in circles, making it impossible to see but a few feet in front of you. The light was burning bright, but the suddenness of the storm sent a bolt of fear through Bucky as he watched the unstoppable waves fall through the air in a terrifying rhythm. The catwalk slipped slightly under his feet as he pulled himself back into the lighthouse and ran down to the viewing room. From there the air seemed clearer and the light shone through the rain. He felt a calm wash over him as he heard the pot boil over just a level below. 

When the sun rose at 4 am and the light was extinguished, the storm had seemed to die out with the darkness, and Bucky, keeping watch all night, hadn't seen any reason to sound the foghorn. He was making tea as the clock ticked by to 6 meaning he had another hour before his allowed sleeping hours. He gazed down at the mug swirling a dark black-brown and tried hard to remember the last time there had been a storm that bad in the isle. 

The last time it had stormed it had been the winter months and so Bucky wasn't alone in the isle. The night-time hours are always too long for one man to work, during winter, so they took shifts manning the tower during the night and slept in between. The man was Toro Raymond an old friend of Buckys from his youth who needed seasonal work during the winter months. The two were in a locked harmony during the latter end of the year and Bucky always looked forward to his arrival as by the time November comes around every year, he was on his eight-month of solitude on the isle. Not that the isolation ever bothered him that much Bucky would never have taken the job if he couldn't bear to be alone for all that time. But October was always a difficult month and seeing an old friend seemed to lift the spirits of the isle. 

He collected his boots and slipped on his jacket ready to assess the damages of the night before. As he stepped onto the marshland he noticed the newly mended fence had been ripped up by the wind but just above it the air was white and clear as the sun hesitated on the horizon and Bucky felt his eyes grow tried at the sight; the fence would have to wait. Walking down the soaked brick walkway he noticed that a tree had fallen onto the path further down near the harbour and was blocking his view to the end of the isle. He walked through the outbuildings to check on the greenhouse and the generator which were both miraculously untouched by the storm. The old fishing boat had thankfully not been tied to the old harbour last night and was instead tucked away in the outhouse still on its metal frame trailer from when Bucky had brought it up to be repainted just a few days before. Bucky braced himself to go back out into the cold and check the harbour. 

Walking a little further and after climbing over the tree he noticed splintered blue wood at his feet. Leaning down he picked up the chunk of wood and inspected it quickly. Gazing up and over the isle, he saw similar chunks scattered amongst the rocks and half a boat upturned and destroyed on the harbour. A knowing fear struck Bucky as he ran down to the ruin forgetting the fence and the tree and fleeing in the hope of it being a mirage created by his tired mind. But he was never that lucky and strewn across the rocks, lifeless and bloody was the body of a young man a good twenty feet from the wrecked boat. Bucky sprinted across the harbour and up to the rocks jumping from ledge to ledge trying not to slip on the moss. The closer he got the most gruesome the scene became and the faster he moved. 

'Hey,' he called out once he got close enough. 'Can you hear me?' He gazed across the last few feet, but no sound came from the man. Bucky leapt over a drop in the rock edge and landed next to the man in a thud. He checked his pulse first but felt nothing but the cold stillness of the skin. 'Hey,' he said turning the man's face towards him and grimacing at the torn-up skin and blood-stained lifeless expression. 'Come on,' he begged silently. And then, panicked and guilt-ridden, he picked up the tall man and carried him across the rock face and back onto the harbour, up the stone path and onto the marshland where he tried to resuscitate him. The man's face was blue, bloody, and cut to pieces as Bucky hovered over him pressing compressions down onto his chest. There was a moment of silence on the isle. Everything stopped, the waves and the gulls hushed their forever playing melody and the wind stood completely still. Bucky heaved in and out broken breaths as he pushed and pushed hoping and praying that the stranger would miraculously live, but nothing shifted. He hesitated for a second pressing a finger to the man's neck and after feeling nothing still, he tried again. Pressing harder and faster praying to nobody in particular that there would still be a flicker of life in the young man but after a moment too long there was still nothing. 

Bucky fell back on his heels and gasped for air as he watched the lifeless body remain still and cold. The man could only be in his late twenties with bright blonde hair and a kind face; a once kind face now torn and lifeless. After a moment he leaned forward and pressed his warm hand against the man's pale blue face and shivered at the unbearable coldness of his skin. Bucky wanted to blame the sea for the fate of the stranger, but he knew he was at fault and cursed himself for not sounding the foghorn. Suddenly the man coughed, flung himself up, and spewed saltwater and moss over the marshland. Bucky stood quickly, as the blonde heaved in a breath and coughed achingly loud, and grimaced at the sight. Suddenly life blasted back into the isle and Bucky was overwhelmed by the noise of the other man and the gulls and the sea and the wind all at once. The man fell backwards onto his back with a thud and lost consciousness all together while Bucky tried to catch his breath but soon the rain began anew, and the storm threatened to erupt again at any moment. 

Bucky carried the man up the isle and into the warmth and safety of the lighthouse without much bother. He made it to the first floor of the living quarters and lay the man on the couch so he could fetch the extra blankets and clothes from the sleeping quarters above. He stripped the man carefully assessing the wounds and dealing with anything that looked serious immediately. There was a gash in his side that Bucky cleaned with a boiled water solution, stitched up, and wrapped carefully securing the bandage with a pin. He focused hard on the task at hand trying not to think about how it was him who had caused all of these permanent scars in the making. Bruising was starting to develop on his legs and chest which could have meant something was broken but Bucky wouldn't know until the man was awake; if he ever did wake that is. After dressing him in Bucky's spare sleep clothes and a couple of sweaters he wrapped him in blankets and began to clean the wounds on his face and hands. By the time Bucky was done, it was already well into his allotted sleeping time and the storm was picking up outside again. He left the stranger and climbed the stairs to the viewing room but was surprised to see the skies were clear. The rain was sparse, and the clouds were bright, but it was the wind making the majority of the noise. He felt the lack of sleep fall over him as the clock struck 9 am and decided that he would try to get some sleep now while the man lay unconscious downstairs and the storm seemed to be brewing but not taking hold yet. 

Bucky was awoken an hour later by the jarring shudder of the lighthouse as the storm ripped through the isles and this time seemed worse than before. Bucky sprung from the bed and up to the viewing room to check the visibility but, once again, the air was clear and the rain vacant and quick. He could see as far as the isles reached and a little further still. The sea was choppy and unforgiving, but the sky was clear and there was no reason to sound an alarm. Wobbling back down the stairs he felt himself grow weak from the lack of sleep but knew he had to keep check of the storm. Moving down another floor to the living quarters he decided to make some coffee and breakfast to lift his energy. Bucky received a delivery every month of goods and produce to keep him going on the isle. If he ran out of needed something, he could send a distress call towards the last isle before the mainland. There lived an older couple who would keep watch during Bucky's allowed sleeping hours and had their own access to the foghorn in case it had to be sounded to warn ships of the isles and Bucky couldn't or hadn't sounded it. Bucky hadn't actually ever radioed the couple before and in the ten years he had lived there they had never had to sound an alarm in his absence; he wasn't even sure if they remembered he was out there. His delivery had come just two days before and he stored most of it in the living quarters and storage level just below it. He had his little greenhouse for fresher vegetables and mostly ate fish he would catch once or twice a week and with the nets he cast just off the shore he never really had to worry about food. 

There is a groan from the sofa about four hours later which made Bucky jump as he was sewing up an old fleece that had gotten torn while he was mending the fence. He looked up from the squint stitches, but the man didn't stir. Bucky was sat at the kitchen table, his boots discarded at the edge of the staircase and his trousers by the washer, in his thermal long bottoms and sweater as the fire burned in the corner of the room. Bucky's eyes drifted back down the task at hand and he watched as his shaking hand made yet another attempt at fixing the fleece. Suddenly, the man tried to sit up but shrieked out in pain as Bucky suddenly appeared at his side. 

'Hey,' Bucky's gruff and unused voice croaked making him cough. 'Hey,' he said again. 'You were caught up in a storm last night your boats destroyed I'm afraid. How are you feeling?' The stranger groans, grabbing onto Bucky's bare forearm and squeezing as he tries to lie back down. 'I've tried to clean you up, but I think you might have hurt your leg?' The blonde nods quickly. 'That's what I thought, and your ribs and side?' His question was met by another pained nod. 'What's your name? 

'Clint Barton,' came the name quietly as the man clutched his side and screwed up his face. 

'Okay, Barton I'm going to need to check under your shirt okay do you need something? I think I have some painkillers in the bathroom?' The man shakes his head and takes in a shaky breath. Bucky pulls up the nightshirt and sees the man's erratic movements had ripped open the stitches and he was bleeding through the gauze. 'I think I'm gonna have to restitch you,' Bucky mumbled, getting up and heading back to the kitchen. He unhooks the thread from the needle and throws it into the kettle on the stove boiling it. The wind howls along with the kettle as Bucky checks Clint's leg. 'Just tell me where and when it hurts and how bad okay?' Clint nods watching as Bucky presses down on the top of his thigh and a dull ache flashes through his back. He shakes his head as Bucky makes his way down to his knee where he narrowly avoids a gash he had wrapped that morning and still Clint felt nothing but the dull ache of freshly battered skin. Then when Bucky's warm hands fell onto his ankle an unimaginable pain shot through his body making him pull away. Silently, Bucky wrapped the ankle in gauze and splints the ankle straight before slipping on a pressure sock he had for emergencies. Clint watched him through heavy bruised lids and tried his hardest not to make too much of a fuss about the pain. Bucky elevated the leg after checking over the other one and finding nothing wrong and then collected the needle from the boiling water. Kneeling by Clint's side he smiles at the man and slips the needle through his skin. Clint hisses slightly and the whole room shakes in the storm as the wind threatens to break through the walls and swallow them whole.

'Where am I?' Clint asks, while Bucky runs the solution over the fresh stitches careful to leave nothing nasty behind in the wound. 

'The Northern Isles, you're as far north as you can get quite a bit from the mainland if that's where you were heading?' Bucky drones with his heavy accent. 'This place is the only thing for about 4 miles and then there's a little isle with a few occupants south and then after that, it's 5 hours till mainland on a good day with a good boat but I can't send for anyone right now not until the storm passes.' Bucky pulls himself off the floor and looks down at the man, who suddenly has colour in his cheeks, and notices the bright blue of his eyes. 

'I understand,' he says. 

'It's about dinner time now,' Bucky says tearing his eyes away from the man and walking through the kitchen. 'I can make you something to eat and then we can try to move you upstairs to the bed.' Bucky runs his hands under the tap for a second watching out the window at the storm. Something is unsettling about the stranger being here and the storm teetering at the edge of the island all at once. His heart aches to be alone suddenly but the thought doesn't last long as he hears a retch from behind him as the man throws himself upwards and gags all at once. Bucky grabs the kitchen bin and paces over to the man who proceeds to throw up saltwater and stomach acid. The colour had drained from him again and for a moment Bucky heard he might be dry drowning, but the man soon stopped and took in a shaky breath. Clint was still gripping onto the side of the bin, his knuckles going white, long after he has stopped throwing up and he swayed slightly as his eyes lost focus and drifted around the room; as if the bin was keeping him anchored to the spot. Bucky watched him carefully, with curious eyes, scared he'd float away. 

After making the man some hot tea and manoeuvring him up upstairs and into Bucky's bed he falls asleep almost instantly. Bucky watches him a for a moment, the tea half-drunk at the bedside and the cleaned-out bin on the floor just in case, before leaving the door wide open and going back downstairs. He cleaned the place up in relative silence as the wind wailed unforgivingly at the window; asking to be let in. The sky was still bright, but the rain begins to thicken in the sky making Bucky wary of visibility. He eats his dinner perched on the windowsill of the viewing room, the stranger sleeping below him, watching the storm grow weary and then out of nowhere find a second wind all before the sunset. When it finally grew dark the artificial light of the isle cut through the storm and warned anyone around that the isles were near. Bucky tried hard to stay awake and fended off sleep well as the roar of the storm kept his heart upright and his eyes as wide as they could get. The storm couldn't seem to break and as the early hours drew in around Bucky up in that tower, he thought to himself it might never end. 

The next morning Clint awakens to the sound of rushing water in the next room. He can't even begin to imagine what it is and when his mind tries to identify a reason for the water it draws a blank. That had been happening since he had woken up on the strange sofa only 24 hours before. Blanks. He opened his eyes slowly taking in the cosy little room. A double bed warm and heavy with four blankets piled atop him keeping the cold autumn air out. In the corner, a writing desk with moleskin journal opened at a half-filled double page of scribbled writing. A closet in the corner and next to it a staircase that twisted both upwards and downwards. To the other side of the room a door, slightly ajar, from where the sound of the water was coming. Clint tried to move but his limbs screamed out in pain as he shifted under the heavy sheets and his head was thumping from the bright light of the early morning that was seeping in through the windows. The wind picked up suddenly outside and Clint turned towards the window above the bed to see raindrops sliding down the glass and collecting at the bottom of the sill. The man appeared in the doorway watching Clint watch the rain. Clint assumed he was the only one in the house since he hadn't seen another soul since he had woken up battered and half-dead the morning before. The man was wide and tall, but not as tall as Clint, and his features were softer and less narrow too. He had an overgrown beard and long hair down to his jaw which sat in messy waves bordering on curls. The man was dressed in long bottoms and a sweater which Clint was sure he was wearing the day before and his eyes watched him carefully as Clint took him in; assured that the man was doing the same to him.

'I ran you a bath,' he said gruffly. 'Thought it might help with the pain,' he offered a moment later. Clint nodded trying once again to get off the bed but being cut short by the searing hot pain that ruptured through his body. A groan escaped his lips as his head fell back onto the pillows and the older man took a tentative step forward. 'You need help?' 

'Yeah,' Clint's throat ached for some unknown reason as if he had spent the day before screaming out for hours and hours. The owner was at his side quicker than Clint had expected lifting him from his shoulders up into a sitting position with little to no pain. Clint swung his legs out from under the mass of blankets and shivered at the coldness of the house. The brunette man held out his arm for Clint to lean on as the two worked in unison to pull him to his feet. Clint had to put nearly all his weight on the poor man as his head spun at the feeling of being upright. He turned towards the window for some reason and noticed suddenly how high up they were. 'Where am I?' He asked, unable to pull his eyes away from the storm. 

'Northern Isles. I told you last night, but I guess you don't remember much.' Clint shook his head quickly. 'Your boat? It crashed on the isle and I found you on the rocks. There isn't anything else around but this place so I can't-'

'This place?' Clint asked, feeling unusually out of the loop. 

'The Lighthouse,' the man answered, before pulling Clint around and helping him towards the bathroom. Lighthouse, Clint thought, that made sense he guessed. His skin sighed at the feeling of the warm air from the bathroom and in the middle a huge old tub big enough for Clint and then some which made him smile. The tub was filled near to the brim with such warm water steam rose off it like it was boiling. The stranger helped Clint down onto the edge of the bath and Clint took off the nightclothes quickly needing desperately to be submerged in the warmth of the bath. When he was finally naked, he took in his torn-up frame. From the knees up to his waist was littered with bruises and gashes he felt bile rise in his throat. He reached down to unwrap his ankle, but the brunette man was already on the floor before he could start to move. Clint watched him as his large rough hands worked delicately on the fragile ankle. Clint unwrapped the gauze around his side and inspected the stitches; needing something to do rather than watch the stranger at his feet. As he rose from the floor, he pressed one of his hands to the bottom of Clint's back and one on his forearm. His hands were rough workers hands, calloused and aged but they were warm against Clint's sensitive skin and he shivered at the feeling. The man held most of Clint's wait letting him guide himself around on his good leg and lower himself into the cocoon of liquid warmth; he closed his eyes with a groan and after a moment he heard the door click shut. 

Clint was sitting at the kitchen table, warm, clean and wounds freshly wrapped, as the rain continued to batter the windows. The stranger, who still hadn't told Clint his name, was cleaning off the boots he had found Clint in that were covered in sand and mud. Clint watched him with increasing interest in who exactly had taken him in during what might be the worst storm he had ever seen. 

'Who are you?' Clint spoke suddenly. The man turned slowly away from the pair of work boots and flashed Clint his confused frown. 'I don't know who you are.' Suddenly, Clint thinks to himself that this might be another blank that he had grown used to since he regained consciousness. Maybe this man wasn't a stranger and maybe Clint had completely forgotten someone he had known before he woke up on that couch. 

'Sorry,' he said quickly. 'I didn't think. I'm James Barnes, but people call me Bucky. I'm the keeper here.' Clint blinks as relief falls over him that he hadn't just forgotten the man. 'You hungry?' Clint nods, smiling as the man busied himself clattering around the kitchen. 

'Thank you,' Clint says. Bucky stops in his tracks and hesitates for a moment before filling a pot with water and setting it on the stove. He leant down to the bag of potatoes that sat at the side of the fridge and threw them into the sink. 'I just-' Clint started but was cut off before he could finish. 

'Don't,' Bucky bit. He turned on the tap and watched as the dirt fell from the veg and down the drain. 'It's my fault you crashed. I didn't think,' he stopped and then sighed, his back still to Clint, 'it seemed like a clear night and I didn't think I needed to sound the foghorn.' 

'All I know is that if you hadn't found me out there I'd be dead and that's all you know too,' Clint turns to the lukewarm mug of tea and wishes he could remember why the boat had crashed that night or why he was even on the boat. Bucky turned and placed the basin of potatoes in front of Clint and handed him a knife. Clint started to peel the potatoes as Bucky cooked the tinned meat over the stove and chopped neeps and carrots. They sat in relative silence as they ate dinner the only sound the persistent drone of the storm and the light roar of the fire that Bucky had lit as the cold air crept in the place once again.

The next morning Clint awoke feeling worse than ever and all he could think about was water as his throat felt like it had closed up during the night. He pulled himself up in the bed and onto his feet and the pain was horrific as it burned throughout him. The storm still hadn't let up during the night and the incessant rattling and howling made Clint feel like the whole place was spinning in circles as he made his way to the bathroom. He got to the sink and lay all the weight he could on it and stared at himself in the mirror. He was pale and broken but it wasn't that that scared him but the way the tiled walls around him twisted in his peripheral vision and how everything went black a moment later. 

After the night watch, Bucky had fallen asleep quickly on the sofa hoping to get his whole 5 hours today after the past few days. The storm was as strong as ever and he had sounded the horn last night for 4 hours while the rain was at its worse and the visibility levels dropped. Bucky couldn't imagine any ships coming their way after all this was day three of the storm that didn't seem to want to let up, but he still felt worried enough to sound the horn until the skies became clearer and the sun rose. It was a thud and a clatter above him in the sleeping quarters at about half ten that woke him. When he reached the top of the stairs the first thing he noticed was Clint wasn't in bed and the next was how the bottom sheet was drenched in blood. He was quick to find Clint's lifeless in the bathroom bleeding quickly onto the floor. 

'Clint?' He grunts pulling the man up and cupping his face. 'Clint?' There is a moment of life as his eyes peak open at Bucky and he slurs unrecognisable words. But then his head goes completely slack in his hands. 

When Clint wakes up the pain in his side is, but a dull ache and his head feels finally still and quiet, like the ocean after a storm. He stares up at the divots and scars of age on the ceiling above him. Paint peeling from old brick and cracks travelling centimetres in decades and creeping outwards like a spider's web. Clint thinks about how right now feels like a moment he should remember something. A thought of home or love or of a time before right now but his mind comes crashing down in a blankness of startling proportions. There is nothing left of his life. 

Bucky is sitting on an armchair across from him sewing an old fleece in a stony but comfortable silence and finally, everything was laid out for Clint. 

'I can't remember anything,' he croaks. Bucky glances up, his eyes more alert than ever and his skin warm against his hair in flushes of red. 

'What do you mean?' Clint thinks about the question. What does he mean? He can remember his name, sure, and how old he is, 29, and that that he grew up at the border on a farm but the family that surrounded him are faceless and nameless and the things that happened to him are hollow and meaningless and slipping away before he can even process the thought. 

'I can't remember anything.' The emotion of the confession gets caught against his tongue and clatters against his teeth and it is this hesitation and jitter in the statement that makes Bucky shift his weight and abandon the needle and thread to dance against the air. 'I know my name and I know I'm- But I can't.' It's hard to explain what you don't know. How do you tell a person that you're almost sure you had a life before that very moment, but you can't remember it? Maybe he only just began existing. Maybe he's gone mad. 

'About the accident?' Bucky's hope is reverent within the question but the resignation in his eyes shows the hope is rightfully false. 'About anything?' His voice is gruff, but his eyes are kind. Clint nods and then the two fall into a solemn silence and Clint is left to remember absolutely nothing. 'It will come back to you,' Bucky says, and he almost sounds sure. He smiles as he rises from the chair and leans over Clint to check his temperature. 'You'll remember soon,' his eyes are sad and with one final glance, he pulls back. 'Get some sleep.' His hand hesitates on the man's cheek for a moment before he turns to leave him. Bucky doesn't glance back, although there is a feeling within him to do so, and instead goes up to the viewing room to watch the sunset once again and to keep watch as the storm burns on like the light above him. There is a sense of something new as he gazes out of the window and out into the storm. A feeling of a sink slowly filling with water and overflowing onto the sides. A feeling of air catching in his lungs. A feeling of the lasting ring of a note in the song the isle played. Bucky watched the sky, like he always did, he sat and surveyed the rain with a scowl, since he always had, and he thought about the light above him and watched it cut through the air; as he always had done. Although a new thought came that evening. The thought of the man below and what he had brought to the isle and who he was and what he was going to do; and how suddenly the snowglobe wasn't so lifeless anymore. Because Bucky felt, in that deep hollow chest of his, that nothing was to be the same again.


	2. Chapter 2

There was a sense of calm within the thick curved walls of the lighthouse over the coming days. The two men falling into, what some might call, a routine and as the two souls floated around living within each other's space and growing closer and closer the storm outside ravaged the land. Clint would find himself, during quiet moments, watching it batter the coastline and spin in menacing circles and think how happy he is to be locked away in that tower. Clint wondered if it was the end of the world, one day while he and Bucky were sitting by the fire, trying to grasp at some sort of warmth during the coldness of the early evening. It was a strange sort of purgatory they had found themselves in. Days passed and the darkness came in short bursts, but it never seemed to be daylight. Sure, the bright air would rise through the dark clouds and the wind and the rain, but never did they see even a glimpse of sunlight. So, while they sat in the still bright air of the day but simmering in the darkness of the storm the thought of this being the end of days seemed rational to him. 

Bucky hadn't known a storm to last for 5 days but here they were underneath and within the worst storm of his lifetime and maybe the next. It wasn't hard to stay calm for the benefit of his unexpected guest. There had been more terrifying things to happen to him than a never-ending storm, and there would probably be a lot more. He found comfort in the company, however. Clint had begun to heal, and the aches finally seemed to leave his body and the bruises turned yellow and faded. But, still, his memories stayed away scared of the storm…scared of the truth. The maddening twist and howling of the storm may have driven Bucky completely insane if it wasn't for the near-stranger he had been sharing it with. One evening, near the end of the storm, they found themselves playing cards, silently, as soup bubbled away on the stove. 

'Last card,' Clint chimed in, a rigid smile spreading on his face. Bucky glanced up from his hand and scowled taking his time in choosing his next move. He made it and Clint all but tutted before picking a card up from the discard pile. 'I am sure you cheat.'

'Take that back,' Bucky grunted, placing down another card and smirking at his hand.

'No, we have played 4 games and every single time you've won! Have you rigged the cards? Got some funhouse mirror attached to the ceiling,' Clint moaned, picking up another card. Bucky laughed at him placing down another. 

'No trick cards or fancy mirrors,' he placed down another, 'last card,' he smirked back. Clint sighed scanning his hand and then down at the table. He placed down a card.

'Then what is it? What trick are you playing?' Clint leaned across the table and waited for Bucky's next move. He smiled back over the final card and shrugged. 

'I ain't playing any tricks,' he said, throwing down his card onto the pile, 'you're just really shit at playing.' Clint slams the rest of his cards onto the table in faux frustration and folded his arms like an angry toddler. Bucky laughs while he leaves the table to check on the dinner. 

'You sit up in this tower of yours like Rapunzel all alone and yet still you are good at card games?' Clint turns on the chair so his eyes can follow Bucky along the kitchen. 

'I ain't always alone,' Bucky turns away from the pot and smiles down at him. 'During the winter my old,' he hesitates, 'an old friend, Toro, he is shipped out to help with the night watch. Shorter days means-'

'You can't do the whole the night by yourself?' Bucky nods. 'So, what you guys sit up here and play cards all day?' Clint turned and scooped the aforementioned cards, organising them into a tidy pile and placing them to the side. 

'That's all you can do. It's too cold to do anything else,' Bucky turns to pour the soup into bowls and grab the bread from its tinfoil wrapping. 'This is my ma's famous recipe so don't complain or I will have to break your other ankle.' Bucky places the bowl in front of Clint and sides into the chair opposite. 

'I'll be sure to lie,' Clint replies softly, his stomach churning at the smell of the food. He hadn't realised how hungry he was until there was hot food in front of him. He took a spoonful of the soup and had to hold back a groan. The soup was actually good, but it could've been seated up seawater for all Clint cared. 'So,' he said after a few more spoonful's, 'where exactly are you from? Cause I'm guessing you weren't born here?' Bucky swallowed the bread he was chewing on and wiped off his beard. 

'I'm from the mainland. Lived in the north my whole life, but my Auntie she lived on a little island just off the coast. No electricity, no running water or anything of the sort. I used to spend my summers over there, and it was great. She had the most interesting life and enough stories to fill libraries and I actually uhh wanted to buy the land when she died but some big oil company wanted it and paid through the nose. So, when this opportunity came along, I went for it.' 

'What did you do before this?' 

'I was a carpenter,' he mumbled, making the other man laugh. 

'A carpenter?' Clint gleamed.

'What's so funny?' Bucky pointed the spoon accusingly at Clint's laughter. 

'Nothing, nothing just…' Clint laughed a little harder, 'Your whole long hair, bearded look and then you tell me you're a carpenter?' 

'Oh, you're funny,' Bucky rolled his eyes. 'I'll have you know I was quite clean cut in those days.' 

'Oh, were you?' 

'Yeah, when you live out in the middle of the sea like a hermit, you're allowed to look like one. On the mainland, I had to keep up appearances.' Bucky looked down at his bowl and sighed. 'I had a good life on the mainland,' his voice suddenly solemn and lonely. 

'Then why did you take the job?' Clint pried. The older man sighed softly as if trying to come up with a reason or an excuse and Clint could sense he didn't want to talk about it. 

'Something happened. Just life, I guess? I mean I always wanted to live out here and when I realised, I couldn't be on the mainland anymore it seemed like perfect timing.' Bucky looked up and smiled as if to reassure Clint. He took a bite out his bread and stopped all conversation. Clint watched him as he ate and thought to himself how the man didn't seem ashamed of the secret he was harbouring, no, he seemed scared of it. So, Clint leaned forwards and grabbed a slice of bread, making sure to smile at Bucky as he did. 

Later that evening the two had settled in the viewing room drinking hot tea and talking about nothing in particular. There was a comfortableness between them now, they could sit in the darkness of the lighthouse at night with little to say and not feel suffocated by the silence. Clint found himself mesmerised by the slow twist of the storm and the steady beat of the waves and the rain and the wind. He had never seen anything like a storm from this high above the ground. Already he was beginning to hate the thought of ever touching the earth again. Being up above everything in this towering fortress was as if being at the pinnacle of the world. Bucky's eyes were much more critical as he surveyed the skies for any sign of the visibility dropping. He had grown used to the feeling of being high above the rest of the world. But suddenly, he saw, peeking from beneath the clouds, starlight. 

'Huh,' he grunted, getting up off his chair and stepping closer to the window. Clint watched him from his, wrapped in a heavy blanket and near sleeping. 

'What is it?' He croaked. 

'Storms dying out,' Bucky placed his hand up against the window and felt the wind shudder against the glass and watched the rain slow. It was as if, just by just touching the frightfully cold glass with his warm calloused hands, he had stopped the violence outside. 'I think it's done.' His words were a whisper and soon they grew true. After a while, when the early morning had crept in and the storm was finally gone, Clint got up to go to bed. 

'You should wake me tomorrow when the sun comes up,' Clint mumbled from the top of the stairs, draped in the blanket and gazing over at him sleepily. 

'Why?' 

'You should sleep in your own bed for once.' Bucky nodded softly, taking a sip from his long cold tea.

'Tomorrow I'll call the mainland and see if someone can come out to the isle,' Bucky assured Clint before he disappears for the night, but this stops Clint in his tracks. 'You can be home by tomorrow night.'

'No,' Clint mutters, 'you can't.' 

'Why not?' Bucky finally turns to him. Forgetting about his tea and the night sky. Clint shuddered at the way he looked in the low light. His eyes glowing and full of something he couldn't quite place. His hair tucked behind his ear at one side revealing the softness of his jaw. 

'What if it comes back. That's what happened right? You thought it had passed and you found me and then it came back. What if you call them and they set out and it isn't gone yet? We can't risk them being caught up in it.' Bucky thinks for a moment and then nods. Clint watches him think and feels a small, unexpected, relief fall across him. 

'Okay, we'll give it a day,' he says before turning back to the window without so much as a goodnight. Clint stays, for a moment, on the edge of the staircase watching Bucky watch the sky. All at once, the moment was interrupted by the idea of Bucky watching over the world every night, protecting it and never wanting anything in return. Although it wasn't the world, Clint thought, it was just the ocean and a tiny minuscule portion of it…but it was still important. Bucky was still important. There was so little to think about as he lay in that strange bed, the only bed he really knows, so his mind drifted to the secret Bucky was harbouring above him. What was it that had made him flee his life and live out in the middle of the sea alone and waiting? Because that was the overwhelming sense on the isle and in the man, that he was waiting on something. 

Clint awoke to a soft hand on his back and he turned towards the feeling and was met by Bucky's soft sleepy gaze. He shook himself a little trying to get out of the bed, which worked until he realised his ankle had gotten tangled in the bedsheet during the night and he yanked it. In the haze of sleep, he tried to pull himself free again, but he yelped out in pain making Bucky recoil. Clint tried to unwrap his ankle from beneath the blankets but in the mist and fog of newly broken slumber, he seemed to find himself more twisted than before. Bucky let out a little laugh, pressing his hand to Clint's shoulder to stop him.

'It's fine, go to sleep. I'll go downstairs,' Bucky whispered, pulling away. 

'No, no,' Clint tugged at his hand. 'I'm fine I just jerked my ankle. Let me,' he pulled at the sheets a little harder but instead of coming free it just tugged his foot in the other direction making him wince. 'It's fine, I just can't seem to get my ankle free.' Bucky leaned down to the bottom of the bed and slowly unwrapped him from the sheets. He took his time, careful of Clint's foot, and moved elegantly as he pulled at the sheets and untwisted them from Clint's leg. Before Bucky could move back to the top of the bed Clint moved out from beneath the blankets in a swift movement, chilled instantly by the cold air. The older man waited for him to move out of the way before he slipped into the bed. There was a shift and creak as Bucky lay down and submerged himself in the familiar warmth. Clint leant down to make sure the makeshift splint and cast were in place before limping towards the stairs but before he could move away something grabbed onto his wrist. 

'Clint,' Bucky said softly. Clint turned back and gazed down at the tired man. 'Get in the bed.'

'No, I already said I'd sleep on the couch,' Clint explained but Bucky's grip on his wrist never let up. In the light of the early morning, Clint couldn't seem to resist the pull of Bucky's warm hand on his wrist or the mellow mist in his eyes. 

'No, get in the bed,' Bucky shifted over and let go of his wrist after one last intoxicating pull. Clint watched as the man slid to the other side of the bed and turned on his back. 'There is enough room for the both of us,' he whispered, and Clint froze gazing down at the empty space beside Bucky. After a moment or deliberation, out in the coldness of the sleeping quarters, he slipped back into the warm and familiar bed and closed his eyes. But sleep never came. It did for Bucky as his breathing changed and little rhythmic snores came from the other side of the bed only a few minutes later. Clint's skin was sensitive to the touch as Bucky's shifted around in his sleep and the feeling made his insides twist while he stared up at the ceiling and thought about the sun getting brighter. It was rising up and peeking through the windows for the first time since Clint had woken up on the island nearly a week before. They had been shrouded in the darkness of the storm but suddenly everything was bright, and he couldn't bear to sleep through it. 

Bucky woke up alone in the bed. He turned towards where Clint had slept and noticed it had gone cold and that the blanket that lay atop the sheets was gone. The place was bright and lively with sunspots and shadows that had been missing for such a long time. Bucky stretched out feeling his ageing body click and ache but in the good way. When he finally got out of bed to see where Clint had gone to, he checked the living quarters first and then the viewing room but there seemed to be no sign of the man until Bucky heard a clatter on the catwalk. He opened the door to the outside and felt the sun on his skin for the first time in days; he couldn't help but smile at the feeling. The breeze was harsh and deep smell of the isle hit him like it hadn't before. Everything was louder after a storm. The way the sea sang, and the wind blustered through and the home-like smell of the sea. It was all a little too much. And then Clint, wrapped in the blanket, was leaning against the railing, gazing out over the isles. Bucky watched him closely as the wind swept through his hair and the gulls squawked overhead. 

'I don't know how you bear it here,' Clint said suddenly, shouting slightly over the wind. 'Don't get me wrong it's a beautiful picture. Like a painting in a museum. I guess for you it's as if you live inside of one but, as beautiful as it is, there is such a sadness here. It's such a lonely scene you've painted.' Bucky sighed at his words, walking across the catwalk and stopping once he reached Clint's side. He took it all in, the moment before them, the sea and the land meeting in calm resignation after days of fighting, the clouds floating by like a passing train and the cold brisk air mixed beautifully with the warmth of the sun. Clint was right. The painting was a lonely one and it took the near-stranger saying it for Bucky to realise just how lonely he was out there, where the waves land.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Idk what this is but uhhh comment if you liked it I guess


	3. Chapter 3

Bucky found an old walking stick jammed at the back of the outhouses that afternoon and gave it to Clint so he could walk with him around the grounds as checked up on everything after the storm. Tucked inside one of Bucky's jackets and encased in the warmth of too many layers, Clint trailed behind Bucky as they walked through the long grass of the highest peak of the isle. Never going further than the outhouses, checking up on the greenhouse, the old fishing boat and the perimeter fence which was in pieces scattered around the coast of the island. Clint was sitting up on the sea wall watching Bucky collect the newly built fence when he was suddenly hit with a memory. He can see Bucky just turning the corner and walking out his eye line when he sees the moment-memory suspended in the air. 

A man, older with dark brown cropped hair sits on the rocks throwing pebbles out onto the water and he's talking away to the nothingness around him. Talking to Clint, who is suddenly right next to him on the rocks looking out at the lake that seemed to replace the ocean in a blink. Clint cast his gaze out to the lake which was surrounded by trees and bright sunny air. So terrifyingly different from the openness of the ocean. The man turns to him and smiles knowingly as he passes Clint a little pebble to throw into the lake. Clint tosses it and, for some reason, the man laughs and then demonstrates as he skims a stone across the lake. It flows along the edge of the water dipping in and out, until it finally plunged beneath the lake and was forgotten forever. Clint turns back and, all of a sudden, the man is a little boy. He reaches out and ruffles Clint's hair while handing him another smooth-edged stone. Clint tries to throw it but it splashes straight into the water and disappears. The boy throws his head back and laughs at him but it's full of kindness. Then he picks up a stone and throws it and it falls into the water in a plop and he tells Clint in a whisper that 'Your way is much more fun anyway.' 

'You still with me, Barton?' Clint opens his eyes to the sound of Bucky. He is standing at the edge of the wall gazing up at him with a soft smile. 

'Yeah,' he croaks back. 'There aren't many places I could go, now is there?' Bucky's eyes squint, as his smile brightened. Clint tried desperately to shake the feeling of the memory as he felt a sadness creep up his spine. A sadness he didn't understand. 

'I'm gonna try and salvage the fence. Collect the scraps and maybe tomorrow I can try to put it back together,' Bucky explained, walking closer to him. Clint nodded but then shivered, involuntary, at the sea wind. Bucky cocked his head at the man. 'Are you cold?' Before Clint could reply Bucky was taking off his gloves and grabbing at Clint's wrist. 

'I'm fine, Bucky,' Clint muttered, trying to pull away. But Bucky overpowers him pulling at his hand and slipping on the gloves. He takes off his scarf next and pulls Clint down by his shoulders to wrap it around him, his warm hand settling against the nape of Clint's neck as he did. Finally, he grabbed the wool hat from the top of his head, sending his hair flying with the wind, and pulled it over Clint's head, covering his ears, only leaving small tufts of bright blonde sticking out the edge. 

'I can keep myself warm when I'm working. You can't, sat up here enjoying the view,' he explains while securing his jacket at his neck to protect himself from the wind. 'You okay?' Clint nods, feeling warmth pool through his body and the smell of Bucky overpower the sea air for just a second. Bucky turned and walked up to the edge of the isle to collect up the scattered remnants of the fence. Clint watched him happily warm and undisturbed by broken memories. 

After a while, with the sun high up in the sky and the waves crashing against the rocks in a rhythmic song, Clint decides to join Bucky who was standing at a precipice watching the ocean. The older man was staring out at the blues and whites and greens of the water ahead of him and Clint only gave it a thoughtless glance as he stood, crooked, in Bucky's shadow. 

'Clint?' 

He turned quickly towards the voice, but nobody stood behind him. He turned back to Bucky and he hadn't moved an inch; still entranced by the sea. Clint let out a shaky breath and shook his shoulders out trying to convince himself it was just the wind. 

'Clint?' 

The voice was sweet and knowing. It was of a woman and she said his name as if she knew him better than any other person ever could. Clint closed his eyes. 

'Clint?' 

He flinched at it, terrified to open his eyes and face up to it. She was so close, and her voice was a sigh along the length of the isle. As if she was standing just behind him whispering into his ear. He could almost feel her warm breath. 

'Clint?' The voice became distorted in the sea air but still, there was that feeling of intimacy. The voice knew him. The voice was so close. The voice was like a siren.

'Clint?' Clint opened his eyes to see Bucky in front of him. His beautiful face stained with worry. 'Are you okay?' He looked around suddenly, but no one was there. Nobody but the two of them. 

'Yeah, I was just…thinking.' 

'You looked like you were in pain.' Bucky's cheeks were red and the edge of his nose pink with the pinch of the cold air. Clint smiled falsely. 

'No, I'm fine,' he shuffled forward slightly as Bucky walked back over to the cliff edge and gestured for the other man to follow him. Clint stood next to him and stared out at the view he had grown accustomed to. 'It's astounding.'

'I know,' Bucky whispered back. 'There was this guy who used to look after the place in the summer. He was a mentee of my father. Learned the craft and worked at the store. He was like an older brother to me. He, uh, used to do two months in the summer to give the usual guys a break. He loved it but his wife hated it and still, she followed him out here every single year. She was a photographer and she would take all these beautiful photos and then complain for hours when they got back about how she ran out of things to photograph within the first two hours.' Bucky laughed to himself and to the memory. 'Then he would say to me 'How can she run out of things to take pictures of when the sea never sits still.'' Bucky suddenly looked sad. 'Every now and then I find myself staring out at it and I can't help but think of them. They are the reason I knew about this place. I had never been, but I had seen pictures from when they would live out here.'

'Why don't they come out anymore?' Clint asked softly.

'They died,' Bucky said quietly. 'About 12 years ago now. They were so young; I mean just a few years younger than me right now. Been together since they were teenagers and thinking about starting a family. They were the best people I ever knew. I told him everything and he barely even flinched when-' Bucky stopped himself after feeling the unravelling of his thoughts. 

'So, you came out here because they died?' Clint asked. 

'That was one of the reasons. The old man who ran the place full time retired and the winter crew not long after. They needed fresh blood. Guys young enough to stick it out and I offered to do it full time. I had no reason to ever be back on the mainland.' Bucky barely looked over at Clint as he spoke. It was as if he was telling the ocean the story, but that would be ridiculous as the sea had watched it happen first hand. 

'Have you though?'

'Have I what?' Bucky turned away from the sea to look at Clint. 

'Been back?' Clint turned towards him. 

'Once or twice. Last Chrismas Toro basically made me. My sister had just had a baby and I was…well I was being a mope. So, I went to stay for a few days with her. Back at the start, they used to give me time off all the time. Y'know? But I just hated being back there.' Clint nodded like he knew, but he didn't. And so, they stood at the edge of the isle battered by the waves and the wind. Two dark pillars staring out into that sea; the sea that never stood still. 

When they returned to the lighthouse in the early evening, Bucky went silently towards the radio. Clint watched him, panic rising in his chest like a sinking ship and tried desperately to hold himself back. But, as Bucky clicked open the receiver, he felt everything spill from him. 

'Please,' Clint shouted over the landing. Bucky's hand hovered over the button and waited for a second allowing the other man to move closer. 'Don't.' His voice was as quiet as a child's as he pleaded with the man. 

'Clint, we need to call the mainland. The storms gone, I promise' Bucky turned slowly clicking off the receiver and Clint felt his stomach settle an inch. 

'But, I'm fine! My ankle is healing and…and I'm fine,' Clint tried to reason, hearing for himself the madness that spilled from his lips. Bucky took a tentative step towards him. 

'I know that, but someone might be looking for you. Just because you can't remember who you are doesn't mean you cease to exist.' The words were soft and meaningful, but they cut through Clint like sharpened sea glass. 

'But,' he stuttered out. 

'But, what?' Bucky reached out his hand. He curled his fingers around the bottom of Clint's hand and stroked his thumb over the sensitive skin of his wrist. Clint looked down to the man's richer skin against the paleness of his own and wanted to cry. 

'I'm scared.' The words came a little stronger, but he couldn't bear to look up. 

'I don't understand,' Bucky whispered. Clint didn't either, he wanted to say in return. He didn't understand a single thing he was feeling and had felt since he woke up on the isle. How the life he had lived, with little scars to show for it, terrified him like nothing else could. How the idea of leaving the isle and being faced with all the things that know him and not being able to recognise a single bit of it made his heart shudder in his chest. How the feeling of emptiness in his head didn't upset him but the idea of someone recognising it made him want to scream. Because he didn't care that he couldn't remember. Nobody could tell him about the life he had lost on the ocean during a storm while he was hidden away in the bright white tower in the middle of the ocean. No, Bucky couldn't tell him about that life because he didn't know the old Clint. Bucky knew him now and Bucky was safe, and that isle was safe, and those rounded white walls were safe. Clint was safe there. 

'I don't know how to explain,' he said, 'I don't want to know, and I know that sounds crazy,' he finally looks up at Bucky and smiles at him, 'but I don't want to know.' 

'You could have a family Clint or…or just someone who is looking for you. Someone who thinks you're long gone?' Clint shakes his head at Bucky's words. 

'No, I don't think I do, and I don't know how to explain it to you but I'm not ready to find that out.' Clint watched as Bucky thought about it. He could see the man's eyes work over the words in his head and the internal battle he was fighting with himself instead of fighting it with Clint, and he was thankful. Finally, Bucky nodded softly pulling his hand away and turning to go up the stairs. Clint stood for a moment stunned by the reluctance of the man. His hand shaking as it cupped his wrist, still warm from where Bucky had been holding him. He closed his eyes and held his wrist in the darkened lower quarters of the lighthouse and waited until his heart settled before he moved even an inch. Clint followed Bucky, after a moment, and once he reached the living quarters Bucky gestured for him to sit at the kitchen table. On it, he had gathered up his medical supplied. Clint walked over, taking a seat, and watched as Bucky lowered himself onto his knees at his side. 

Bucky slowly slid the old cable knit jumper, that Clint had borrowed that morning, up over Clint's torso to expose the old dressing from the night before. He unwrapped it slowly as he knew now that the other man would wince at even the lightest touches to his ribs and torso. Clint tipped his head to the side so he could stare down at Bucky as he dripped the solution over the wound and dabbed it with a delicate touch. His free hand laying just above the healing gash on Clint's warm skin. The younger man couldn't bear the silence, but all echoes of conversation had left him. Bucky was making sure to clean the wound fully without hurting Clint but, when he felt the man's dark stare from above him, he abruptly stopped. He lifted his gaze and met Clint's and took him in, illuminated by the low light of the day creeping through the windows. Clint's eyes were trained to him with such desperation it made Bucky scared of what would happen if he dared to look away. He noticed the gashes and scrapes on Clint's face had healed well over the week and all the little bruises had faded completely; unlike the ones on his body. His hand, still soft against Clint's side, stroked down from his waist to his hip and pulled away. Clint winced lightly from the loss as the older man looked back down at the wound. 

'I don't think we'll have to wrap it tonight,' he mumbled, glancing back up quickly. Clint nodded softly holding Bucky's gaze for as long as he could before the man pulled away completely. 'I can wrap it tonight if it gives you any jip.' He pulled himself up from Clint's side, but Clint grabbed him as he reached his eye level. His shaking hand reached out to stop Bucky and held onto his forearm in a desperate grip. 

'Thank you,' he whispered, the intimacy of the entire moment overwhelming him. Bucky let out a breathy sigh.

'You've already thanked me a hundred times, Cli-'

'No,' Clint cut him off. 'I meant, thank you for not making the call.' Bucky cast his gaze down to Clint's hand on his arm and shrugged. 

'I don't understand it but, you asked me not to and I can't imagine why I would go against your wishes,' his words were so soft in the air between them that Clint had to concentrate to hear what he was saying over the sound of the waves and the gulls outside. Suddenly, he pulled away allowing Bucky to do the same. They ate in silence and then after a long day and even longer evening Clint and Bucky walked up the viewing room to watch the sunset over the isle. Clint still couldn't get over the view and still gasped lowly at the view of the sun plunging into the ocean and leaving the two of them in the darkness of the night before the light above them lit the sky in its absence. There was a calmness in the air, Bucky noted, as the time passed, and the darkness fit itself in the smallest corners of the place. 

Clint, however, felt no calm. Just the niggling panic of memories reaching the front of his mind. Creeping into view. The man he saw earlier by the lake, with the familiar eyes who seemed to look at him so knowingly. Yet Clint couldn't place him. The voice in his head that kept ringing over and over again that wasn't his or Bucky's, but a woman who seemed to know his name is such an intimate way. She spoke in a hushed fellow feeling that did nothing but make his entire chest tense up and stutter out. He couldn't bear it, the idea of it all biding it's time for him to remember. The idea of his entire life waiting in the wings of this grand masquerade he was playing out. He glanced over to the man who played his opposite so beautifully. Unaware of the impending doom but understanding that every protagonist must meet their antagonist no matter how far away the isle they landed on is from it. It will find them. It will find Clint. His life will find him, and he will remember, and this entire facade will finally crumble.

Clint lay in that lonely bed missing the man who sat above him in some weird twisted way. He didn't understand how this longing attachment to the man had grown into dependency. He felt so alone down in the sleeping quarters and wished for the sun to rise soon. And it did, after a long while, but Bucky never came. He never came to bed and Clint was left to convince himself that he had dreamt the man up in the sadness of his desperation. He hadn't. He knew that because he could smell him on everything. On the bed, on the clothes Clint was wearing, on his skin. He could hear him moving about in the viewing room. He could see him if he closed his eyes and thought about it enough. He could conjure Bucky in a crystal-clear vision in the loneliness of the man's bed. And with that vision keeping him warm, Clint finally fell asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am once again losing my mind at how this fic is coming together so quickly. This chapter felt a little stilted but OH MY GOD the next chapter is blowing my mind. 
> 
> Leave a comment...pls


	4. Chapter 4

The day was warm for the time of year. The sun was low, and the clouds were few and far between. The wind but a faint sigh. The ocean a gorgeous lull. Bucky had stumbled past Clint at some point in the morning mumbling about fixing the fence. Clint followed him around the place drifting like a shadow and as quiet as one too. Soon they found themselves outside in the lukewarm air of that early autumn day which seemed to hover above them. There was a sense of silence throughout the isle as Bucky went to work and Clint watched. The silence wasn't just from the elements but, it seemed, that the isle's lonely groundskeeper was in on the scheme of silence too. 

'Your sister,' Clint says suddenly as he watched Bucky hammer the beginning of the new fence into the grassland. 

'Yeah?' Came the other man's reply nonchalantly. 

'What's her name?' Bucky stopped for a moment and turned to him. It had been strange between the two men since the string of moments the evening before. Bucky had barely spoken to Clint all afternoon and from the look of it, he hadn't slept yet either.

'Becca,' Clint tried a smile, but the man seemed to ignore him. 'She's a few years younger than me.' He turned back as quickly as he replied and left Clint to watch him. Clint huffed to himself as he sat lonely on a perch and continued to watch the silent film play. He scrambled for something to say, something to break the tension that had, without his permission, built itself into an impenetrable wall between the two. A while passed as Clint considered the scene and after a moment longer, he gave in. 

'I think I'm going to go in,' Clint spoke softly, and Bucky grunted back hammering a little harder. As he stood Clint wanted to walk over to the man, who had discarded his jacket to the side and was building up a sweat as he worked. He wanted to ask him what he had done to make him pull back. Clint knew he didn't need to ask. Inside the lighthouse, the warmth hugged him, and he soon shed the extra layers he had donned the earlier in the day. Clint grabbed a glass of water from the kitchen and walked up through the sleeping quarters, up past the viewing room and out onto the catwalk. The wind was light today but even, so the catwalk was so high up they always had to watch their step. Clint tucked himself down at the edge of the platform with his legs dangling down and exposed to the elements. He could watch the whole isle from up there. The waves swooping onto the shoreline near the harbour, the few scattered trees that shook against the air, the way the land dipped and rose after thousands of years of erosion. Clint grew calmer at the sight but then he spotted the wreck of his little boat at the edge of the harbour. He thought the sight of it, the ghostly scene of it, would trigger something or make him feel something. But his heart remained a steady beat and his eyes glazed in a vague disappointment. There hadn't been any more visions or voices that day, which he was grateful for, but the coldness of Bucky had been overwhelming his every thought. Up, high above everything, Clint was left to wonder what exactly the other man felt while he grew closer and closer to oblivion. 

Clint's eyes fell onto Bucky who was working steadily around the perimeter of the lighthouse. He was angry, Clint thought. The way he worked was aggressive and violent and oh so different to the man he had been for the past few weeks. Clint tried hard not to imagine the ways he had unravelled the man. The way his forwardness had sent him off the rails. Clint had tried to keep the thoughts of the man's simple touches out of his mind and he knew now, more than ever, how innocent they were. He was comforting Clint. He was trying to assure that the near-stranger wasn't going to lose his mind while they were both stranded out in the middle of the ocean. He didn't feel the spark of electricity when they touched that Clint did. Clint could still feel the man's fingers around his wrist and his warm touch against his waist. Bucky wanted him gone. He had taken in a stray who was overstaying his welcome and Clint knew that. Clint just didn't want to go. 

Bucky was trying his hardest not to think of the man who had come to share the isle with him. He had followed him about as he had for weeks as if Bucky hadn't overstepped the night before. Clint had tried to act as if he was fine, but Bucky could see how he had ruined it. Those little touches and glances he stole over the last few days hadn't gone unnoticed but still, he let himself become attached. Along with the lack of sleep, Bucky couldn't help but close in on himself as he worked. Taking the hammer to the wood as if it had done him wrong. And Clint hovering beside him as if nothing had changed. He had spent the long night hours contemplating, alone in the viewing room, the way Clint had pulled away from him in the kitchen. Flinching at the intimacy Bucky had forced upon him. When Clint had gone inside the lighthouse a sadness allowed itself to settle in his place. No longer angry, Bucky dropped the hammer onto the grass and stared out at the isle. How did the place look the same but foreign to him simultaneously? How did it look different when the only thing that had changed was the secondary silhouette against the artificial light? How did it still look the same when Bucky felt like a different man completely? He closed his eyes and let the sun beat down on him and felt his shoulders unravel and the tension fall to the ground. 

'How,' he spoke aloud, 'how could I let myself feel this way.' The isle replied with the sweet little song it always played and Bucky smiled tightly, picking up the hammer and getting back to work. 

Clint watched Bucky as he finally put in the final post of the fence and took a step back to look at it. He saw the man sigh deeply, taking in a gulp of the fresh sea air and turning to walk down the path. He wondered down the cleared-out route and got smaller and smaller in his eye-line until he reached the tree blocking the path. The top half has been chipped away at and Bucky picked up the axe and began to dispose of the rest. Even this far up Clint could make out the way his arms tensed and stretched as he worked. He wished, for just a second, to be by his side. Watching the way the muscles in his back shifted beneath the shirt he wore and the way his hair stuck to his forehead in a gleam. Clint found himself entranced by the methodical movements of the lonely figure out on the isle. But as soon as he noticed the sun shifting in the sky, he knew he had to pull himself away. 

When Bucky got back to the lighthouse, and as the sun curled up behind him, he could smell the warmth of food cooking upstairs. He followed the scent, his stomach growling at the near taste, and found Clint in the kitchen stooped over a pot. Bucky was caught off guard by the image. He knew Clint had been cooking by the aroma of the place but the actual picture of Clint in his kitchen cooking away unknowingly send a pain to his chest. 

'You didn't have to,' Bucky said, throwing his jacket onto the couch next to Clint's and slipping onto a chair. Clint sent him a quick smile before turning back to their dinner. 

'I thought I'd better start pulling my weight,' he said meekly, unsure of Bucky. 'I noticed your records under the coffee table.' Bucky's eyes went straight to the boxes that sat hidden away. 'Quite a collection.'

'They were my dad's. He gave them to me when I turned 21 when he thought I was finally old enough to look after them right.' Clint smiled to himself. Bucky was back to full sentences again which was good. 'I continued collecting although I'm sure he would disapprove of some of the newer additions.' Clint felt a sense of pride at the way Bucky was talking to him. Ignoring the day that had shrouded him in a darkness.

'Like what?' 

'Bowie,' Bucky started, 'Simon and Garfunkel, The Kinks, Hendrix, Fleetwood Mac…' He trailed off and Clint felt a deep desire to turn to look at him, but he didn't. 'My sister sends out some stuff now and then. Songs she hears of the radio that reminds her of me. Once she sent me this absolutely dreak album. Just sad song after sad song. Left a little note saying it might cheer me up a bit.' Clint spat out a laugh as he tried to hold it in, but Bucky soon joined him, chuckling at the story. 'She was right. It was a good album.' 

'Your dad?' 

'Oh, Bing Crosby, Sinatra, The Andrews Sisters…don't get me wrong it's not bad stuff. He used to tell me that music made the world go around and If it wasn't for music, we'd all be dead or out of love.' Bucky turned back to Clint who was still standing with his back to him. 'Nothing better than being alive and in love,' he said, mostly to himself. 

'He sounds like a good man, your dad,' Clint said as he grabbed bowls from the cupboard and started to serve up the stew he had been cooking all afternoon. He turned to Bucky and handed him a plate. 

'He had his moments.' Was all Bucky said as the two fell into a silence that was so unlike the one that had shrouded them for the whole day that it made Clint's skin sing. 

Clint was sitting back on the chair, hands across his stomach and eyes closed as Bucky cleaned up the remnants of their dinner. Clint listened to the sound of the man moving around the place, crockery clinking together and water splashing around in the sink. Suddenly something heavy thudded down onto the table and then another clink sounded out. Clint opened his eyes and saw a bottle of old whiskey and two glasses sitting out. Bucky smiled gesturing over to the sofa. The two settled on the floor with their back up against it as Clint poured out the drinks. Bucky slid the records out from under the table and sat the record player on top of it. Clint handed him a glass and he took a gulp grimacing at the familiar burn. 

'Pick one,' he mumbled, taking another sip. Clint leaned forward like an excited child and skimmed his fingers along the top of them, feeling the worn-out covers, sending dust flying up into the air. His hand stopped at an album and he slid it out, handing it to Bucky. The music played out into the hollow room as the two sat in a painless silence sipping away at the rich whiskey that blurred the hours away. 

By the time the vinyl had finished spinning Bucky and Clint were a few glasses into the bottle and seemed nowhere near stopping. As Bucky slipped the record into its cover Clint flipped through the expansive collection trying to see if he recognised anything that passed over his glazed eyes. He stopped on a random record and pulled it out slipping it into the player and placing the needle down. Bucky, distracted now, poured the two another drink and turned to hand Clint his refilled glass. A couple of beats into the first song Bucky's face lit up like a Christmas tree. 

'You have just chosen, what may be, the greatest album of all time,' Bucky slid his glass onto the coffee table and sat up straight. Clint did the same waiting to see what the older man was going to do. 

'The greatest album?' Clint mumbled as a man's soft voice floated through the air. Bucky shook his head, almost in disbelief at the true greatness of the music playing. 

'Clint,' Bucky mumbled. 'Have you never heard of it before?' Clint shook his head watching as Bucky's became more and more animated. 

'I'm going to be honest, if I can't remember my own life, I don't think I'm gonna remember some album.' This caused Bucky to turn to Clint with accusing eyes. The feeling of awkwardness had fallen away with the alcohol. Bucky had known when he had grabbed the bottle from the back of the pantry and dusted off the stoor of a decade. He had known that this would make him weak. Clint made him weak. He couldn't pretend to ignore the man when he was the only thing on his mind. 

'This isn't just 'some album' this is 'Hunky Dory' by David Bowie. The single greatest collection of songs to ever be released.' Bucky shook his shoulders a little to the uptake of beat and suddenly, in a slur of the drunkenness, began to sing. 'So, I turned myself to face me, but I've never caught a glimpse.' Clint burst into light laughter at the image. The stoic man singing softly along with the grainy music. 'How the others must see the faker, I'm much too fast to take that test,' Bucky sway a little smiling brightly at the other man. He pulls himself a little closer to Clint, out of breath and goofy eyed. Clint's eyes were scrunched at the corners as he watched Bucky get closer to him swaying. Bucky's hand goes up to Clint's shoulder and he holds him steady as the chorus comes in. But Bucky doesn't sing. 

'I'm sorry,' he said suddenly, cutting into Clint's laughter. 

'For what?' Clint whispered, the man singing brightly as they spoke. 

'Last night.'

'I don't understand.'

'I was…I…it's…' Bucky lets out a hollow laugh. 'I think I'm…oh god what am I saying?' His breath was hot against Clint's cheek as he stuttered through the nonsense sentence. 

'I don't know, I'm trying to figure out,' Clint laughed. Bucky's eyes fell suddenly to his lap and his smile dispersed. The music getting louder and louder in their silence. 

'I didn't mean to.' Was all he said as he averted his gaze.

'Buck?' Clint wanted badly so lean forward into his space. To comfort whatever mess was going on in his drunken mind. 

'I thought, I don't know I was being stupid,' Bucky mumbled, lifting his head and gazing at the man. 

'You weren't.' Sincerity dripping from every word. 

'I just-' Bucky started.

'I understand.' Clint finished. Bucky didn't pull back just yet and instead swaying along to the music that drained into the place. His eyes trained to Clint as he watched him with amused eyes. The moment soft among the day of strangeness that had consumed them. Clint had lied, he didn't understand why Bucky was apologising. He didn't understand why the man had suddenly become happy to be in his company again. He didn't understand why he was looking at him the way he was. 'Your dad didn't like this?'

'Didn't like what?' Bucky's eyes shifted in the low light of the place.

'The music?' Clint watched as a Bucky's relaxed after a moment. 

'Oh, no. He was an old-fashioned man. Stuck in the past,' Bucky mumbled with a sadness that made Clint think there was some hidden meaning in the words. Clint leaned back as one song blurred into the next. 

'I was thinking, last night, about the guy who used to live here,' Clint spoke softly. The older man twisted his head to look up at him as he spoke. 'I was thinking about him-'

'Steve,' Bucky mumbled. 

'I was thinking about him and his wife and all the people who had lived here before you before I got here. And I remembered something,' Clint finally admitted. 'I think I have a brother.' Bucky sat up, alert and wide-eyed. 

'Go on,' he coaxed, excitement rushing through him. 

'I don't know much else. I just remembered him yesterday. A face and a memory but I couldn't work out who he was but after I heard you talk about Steve…I don't know something came back,' Clint stared off into the darkness ahead of him and tried to think about the face of the man by the lake. The boy by the lake. 'I can't remember his name.' 

'That's okay,' Bucky reached out, but stopped himself and pulled back. 'This is good. You're going to get your memory back.' Clint nodded softly leaning back and feeling a pressure release from his chest. Bucky leant his head back onto the soft cushions of the sofa and closed his eyes as the man begins to sing again softly. Clint takes this moment to watch him. Softness passing over his face after it being stained with worry all day. The older man inhaled slowly and then exhaled a moment later and then smiled. 

'Oh, you pretty things, don't you know you're driving your mama's and papa's insane,' Bucky sang to himself as his shoulders swayed along to the song. Clint felt himself lean closer and closer and then, suddenly, a darkness fell over the room. Bucky leant up bumping his arm against Clint's chest as he took in the sunless room. 'I lost track of the time,' he mumbled as he clicked the record player off and wobbled towards the staircase. Clint watched, eyes wide and wondering, as Bucky passed him in a flurry. 'You coming?' He asked, a tiny little smile peeking through the haze of the night-time. Clint nodded softly and followed after him. 

Clint felt a hand press onto his shoulder and a soft voice whispers down to him as he dreamt of nothing but the sun and the sea dancing around one and other but never touching. 

'Clint?' The soft voice hummed. Clint grunted back twisting in the warmth of his dream. 'You gotta go to bed.' Clint tried to shift the voice from his mind. Willing it to fall into the sea. 'Clint, baby?' Clint opened his eyes and looked up from the floor where he lay. The sky above him twisting in terror. 'Clint, baby you need to go to bed.' Clint glanced towards the voice and saw, kneeling at his side, a faceless woman talking to him through an invisible mouth. Clint jumped back trying to get away from the ghostly figure. 'Clint?' The voice haunted the air. He turned and finally saw he was in a boat floating on the sea. The sky above twisting in a violent storm but still they sat calmly on the water. The faceless figure started screaming at him trying to pull him closer to the water. 'Clint? Clint! Clint!'

'Clint?' Clint opened his eyes and saw Bucky illuminated by a golden haze. 'You need to go to bed,' the man said softly. Clint shook his head twisting underneath the blanket that he had wrapped himself in the night before. Bucky let out a sigh pulling at Clint's hand. 

'I can sleep up here until you're done,' Clint mumbled sleepily. 'Until the sun comes up,' he sighed. 

'Suns up,' Bucky replied. Clint looked around and saw, through the window, the golden sunlight peaking up from beneath the ocean. He smiled at its hello. 'You fell asleep pretty quickly last night but I couldn't bear to wake you,' Bucky admitted to him and it made Clint's chest feel light and airy. He turned back to him and nodded letting Bucky pull him up and drag him by the hand towards the stairs. Clint was too tired to think too much about the way Bucky held his hand all the way through the viewing room and down the stairs and over to the bed. Clint moved to get in the bed, but Bucky stopped him. 'You need to get out of your clothes,' Clint looked down at himself and shrugged trying, once again, to get into the bed. Bucky pulled him back harder and then made him standstill as he stripped him. Bucky started with his sweater. Pulling it over Clint's expanse of shoulder and tossing it to the side. He unhooked Clint's trousers and slid them down to his ankles so he could step out of them. He remembered, vividly, taking off the man's wet clothes after he found him on the rocks. How he didn't think twice back then when he was trying to save the man's life. But now? Now he notices how soft Clint's pale skin looks in the low light of the early morning. Now his eyes can't help but linger of the way his shoulders stretch for miles. Now he winced at the freshly healed wounds scattered his perfect skin. Bucky looked away quickly trying to find some night clothes but when he turned back Clint was already climbing into bed with just his underwear on. Bucky took a moment to watch the sleeping man before he turned away completely. 

'Bucky?' Clint called, sleepily from the comfort of the bed. Bucky didn't look back and continued towards the staircase. 'Bucky?' Clint said a little louder. 

'Yeah?' Bucky called back. He was standing at the top of the stairs ready for another night's sleep on the couch. 

'Come to bed.' His words were soft and sleepy, and Bucky was sure that if the man wasn't half asleep, he would never have asked. He would never have invited him into the bed with him. The words were like a sweet melody floating around the room and filling Bucky with that false hope he had told himself not to fall for. Bucky looked down the stairs into the darkness of the living quarters and then back at the warm bed and the body that occupied it. He inhaled sharply before taking a step towards Clint. 

When Clint finally woke up the day had begun to trickle away outside and he could feel the sunlight flickering in through the windows. He sighed softly at the warmth of the bed and the body beside him. Opening his eyes he could see Bucky, close enough to touch and snoring softly and at peace. Clint shifted closer to the warmth and let his hand slide up to the pillow and lie next to Bucky's. The side of their pinkie's touching softly in the privateness of sleep. Clint watched their skin meld together as he hooked his pinkie over the back of Bucky's hand and the rest of his hand followed. The pale skin of his hand laying on top of Bucky's aged richer skin was mesmerising. He wanted time to stand still. Clint clutched onto his hand and Bucky, in the midst of sleep, held on too. As if they were two lonely rafts on the ocean with only each other to keep them afloat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Imma throw a wrench in the works next chapter hahahahah
> 
> anyway


	5. Chapter 5

Time flowed like a steady river and the lonely men let themselves be swept along. Although a storm of time and wonder had brought the two together, a collision of ash and debris is how it truly started inside that inconceivable little snow globe. A tragedy had swept the two from normalcy and into the air and as things finally began to settle they held onto each other and floated back down to earth. However, Bucky felt himself unable to touch the other man who shared, so beautifully, the space that was once all his. As if two of the same kind of magnet, they were finally near a precipice of inevitability and yet something sat between them. That something had shifted between the two. Suddenly, there was a knowingness that hung in the air like the sweltering low autumn sun. 

Bucky couldn’t fathom the weather those few days. How the heat was building and suddenly there was no need for extra layers or his hat. No, the sun and closeness of Clint were enough to keep him warm. Even in the darkest corners of that little snow globe, there was a warmth that replaced the frost of the early morning. He mourned for the coolness of the sea air as he stood at the edge of the bed gazing out of the window at the elderly view. Clint asleep in a ball of similar warmth, had an arm stretched out over the expanse of blankets and blankness as if he was reaching out for something brand new. A desperate sigh creaked through the lighthouse as the wind blew steadily against everything. Bucky, watching Clint now, was pained by the idea of him. The existence of him. The tragedy of him. Now there was nothing to stop Bucky from losing himself within the man who slept peacefully in his bed. To fall into the blue ocean he held in his eyes and never, ever, look back. Nothing in this world will stop him from finally giving in to the feelings he had held for longer than the man had existed on the island. For this was not just about Clint and his soft pale skin and his kind fermata laughter. No, this was about the secrets Bucky had harboured, tethered to his skin, for his entire life. 

When Clint awoke Bucky knew things were to come crashing down. For he was to gaze into the man's eyes and try not to fall deeper into the bright light of life the tragedy of a man held in his eyes. He had to keep himself upright. He had to keep himself from drowning in him. It was useless though because just the feeling of Clint’s skin on his was enough to make him forget about all reasons that they shouldn’t be allowing themselves to fall into oblivion together. And for what? To live inside this little ornament forever and ever? Pretending as if nothing ever existed further than they could see? That the end of the world was at the horizon? How beautiful it would be to live like that. Bucky thought as the watched the man sleep. How beautiful it would be live like this. 

~

‘I was thinking,’ Clint says through a mouthful of porridge, ‘that I can repaint that fence today.’ Bucky glazed across at him over the top of his morning tea. His eyes were heavy with sleep and the obvious hangover the two of them shared but didn’t seem to want to admit to. For admitting to the hangover would mean admitting all of the events of the night before. 

‘Are you sure?’ Clint nodded softly before scooping up another mouthful. ‘I can head down to the boat may be clear it up a little.’ Clint shrugged this time seemingly unbothered by the mention of his boat that lay in pieces at the bottom of the isle. 

‘It’s a good day for painting,’ was all he said in return. Bucky silently agreed. 

~

Bucky was caught off guard by the way his skin felt against the cool sea air that morning as he watched the ever-present scene of the ocean and the rocks colliding in harmony. The warmth of the day, never overwhelming, and the coolness of the sky, beautiful as ever, and the heat of the man, unknowingly tragic, it was enough to knock him off his feet. He kept catching himself in the moment as he had never experienced on the isle before. Alas, he was always playing back old memories and letting his mind drift away while he spent days and days alone on the little hunk of rock in the middle of the ocean. It was the only way to survive it. However, now he felt himself more on the isle than he ever had before. He was there. Breathing it all in. Every last breath of salt air and mystified breeze. Every last second of Barton and his lopsided smile and sparkling blue eyes. Every last drop of rain and sunshine.

Clint was standing just off to the side, fiddling around the pot of old paint Bucky had stored away in the outhouses. The clinking and clanging of his clumsy attempt at unsticking the lid broke Bucky out of his spell of thought. He leaned forward almost instinctively but when his hand brushed against Clint it set them both alight. Clint dropped the tin as soon as he felt the tingle of Bucky’s delicate touch against his cool skin. The split down the middle and the milky coloured paint started to drip down. All Bucky could do was stare down at the ensuing mess as Clint fumbled into action trying to salvage the pain. He laughed nervously at himself as Bucky just stared dumbly down at the ground. Clint stood upright with the tin back and secure in his hands and smiled down at Bucky.

As Clint turns over in bed he feels the familiar warmth of her. Her blonde hair splashed across the pillow, getting tangled in everything. The sweetness of her. He closed his eyes against the harshness of the summer sun blazing through the tiny gap in the curtains. Everything was milky pink as he steeped lowly in the moment just before he had to face the day. 

‘We really should get up,’ her voice was soft and sweet against him like the warmth of the lake in the summertime. He opened his eyes to her sunshine smile and couldn’t help by smile back. ‘You should read get up. I have the day off.’ 

‘You always have the day off,’ he coughed back, lunging himself at her and burrowing his head in her honeyed hair. She squawks at him trying to push him away, but the butter-soft kisses he placed along her neck soon distracted her. 

‘You’re a menace, Clint Barton,’ she rumbled. He lifted his head, his cheery little grin and glittering blue eyes sparkling in the sunlight. She fell in love with him all over again when he smiled at her like that. He knew it too. 

He grimaced at the sun that blinded the daytime in a strange unworthy warmth. A warmth that never seemed to reach him as much as it did the rest of the isle. He watched as he, almost automatically, slicked the matted paintbrush with that off-white gloop and swiped rhythmically along the new wooden fence. He was able to sit while he worked his way along the perimeter which gave his ankle a break from the weight of him. From the weight of more than just him. These memories were coming quick and fast over the past day. Bundled in the confusing little tableaux’s, faces he doesn’t recognise telling him about places he can’t remember and voices that make his heart stutter in his chest but for which reasons he cannot fathom. He glanced down the isle, towards where Bucky had trudged only a few hours ago, wishing his only companion would reappear and settle his ever-wandering mind. The task at hand was one worth roaming aside from. He found himself cherishing the little snippets of time he was experiencing only because they did not tell him anything. They did not break his heart. Although he felt they could at any second and so the time between tableaux’s and scene and hallucinated meetings was plagued with the fear of the next. But the next was always just the same. Hollowed out memories which meant nothing but everything simultaneously. 

He turned back to the fence and watched a particularly oversaturated droplet of paint creep down the length of it while slowly drying against the wind. It was running away from some horrid thing. But the wind was catching it. Drawing it in. Closing it off. The droplet ran scared as it tumbled down the newly painted wood, sticking to everything while time set it in stone. Time was bringing it to a halt and letting it succumb to its fate. Clint wanted to laugh at the little droplet’s futile attempt at escape. Oh, how silly its little plan was. Running away from its fate. 

~

Bucky wasn’t immune to the isle’s charm even after all of those years and he had never, in his life, wanted to leave. He had never wanted to go back to the old life he had or attempt a new one. You would think that one would grow bored of the beautiful scenery and start to see cracks in the fault lines where two shells of glass were fixed together with glue. But Bucky never did. Until then. Until right there when he was on his own out in the middle of the isle. Far enough away from Clint that he could pretend he wasn’t there and close enough that the panic never fully took over. The idea of being away from the man drenched him and suddenly he was thinking of escaping. Running away with Clint back to the mainland or maybe somewhere further out. The two of them. Just the two of them. He wished for a moment they could stay tucked away in their little snow globe. Cooped up behind splintering glass. But that was a fairytale. Bucky would run away with Clint. He thought as he surveyed the marshland and picked up debris. He could leave the safety of the isle if Clint asked him to. Something caught his eye, beneath a layer of dirt and gunk. Something sparkling in the daylight and glittering from its shallow grave. Bucky dug it out and pulled it up to inspect the bright ring of gold. He smudged away the dirt and saw inside an inscription in tiny delicate little letters. 

‘Clint Barton and Barbra Barton ~ 1974’

Bucky’s breath hitched as the words hit him and left bullet holes in his chest. Emptiness filled his chest and spilt out all at once. There was a moment where he thought his eyes were deceiving him. But there was no reason for them to do so. No, Bucky had had the best night sleep of his life just mere hours before. He hadn’t eaten this well in years. He hadn’t felt real in over a decade and now he felt solid and whole and…broken. Bucky let the ring lie flat in the palm of his hand and burn at his skin. Blistering him in this intense heat of the truth in the scalding sunlight. The bright light of the day exposed everything. In the darkness of the early morning, he held Clint’s hand and felt nothing but the soft skin against his fingers and the warmth of the man. In the brightness of the daylight lay a ring that cursed that hand. It cursed everything. 

Clint Barton was married. Clint Barton had a wife out there looking for him. Clint Barton couldn’t remember and so why did it matter? Bucky argued with himself. Clint didn’t remember her. Clint didn’t remember much but he was remembering. His brother, his childhood, those little snippets of memories he recalled to Bucky in the quietness of the isle. Just the two of them. Now there was three. The phantom of the wife, the widow, the woman. Bucky knew it was wrong to feel mad and it was wrong to want to toss the ring into the ocean and forget about it. It wouldn’t really matter. Clint lost the ring at sea…he never needed to know she was out there…nobody needed to know Clint was here with him. Bucky shook his head and thought about her. The woman, the widow, the wife, she would be losing sleep…tossing and turning…praying for her husband. Bucky imagined for a moment if he was her. Waiting for Clint. Knowing he was gone, lost to the monster that was the ocean and he felt himself want to cry for her. The widow, the woman, the wife. But she wasn’t a widow. Clint was alive. Clint was only a moment away. Clint didn’t even know what he was missing. A beautiful wife, maybe even a few kids, a happy little home waiting for him on the mainland. 

Bucky gazed up at the sky and saw cracks along the sky and sighed. He knew it would never last as long as he needed it to. The snow globe was splintering before him. 

Abandoning the day of work in the back of his mind and at the bottom of the isle, Bucky pocketed the ring and made his way to Clint. He thought about Clint’s reaction when he told him. He thought about the call he’d have to make to the mainland. Telling them to come get Clint, to tell his beautiful wife that he was fine, to tell his family their wonderful Clint was safe. Then…well then Bucky would be on his own again. Alone on the beautiful isle with just the memory of Clint to keep him company. Just the imprint of him on the sea torn walls to remind Bucky of the man. 

When Clint came into view he was covered in paint. It was across his cheeks like warrior paint and stuck in matted clumps against his blonde hair. It dripped down his hands and arms. It stuck to every piece of exposed skin that Clint had to offer and more. Spilling over his clothes and clogging up his pores. Clint caught site of Bucky a moment after Bucky came into view. He dropped the paintbrush into the pot and paint splashed back against his face. Peppering his pale skin with snowflake freckles. He scrunched his face up as it snowed down onto him and then laughed. Bucky wanted to cry at it all. The ring burning against the materials of his trousers through to the skin of his upper leg. A scorching ring of gold with the imprinted words branding him. 

Clint un-scrunched his face and opened his eyes to take in the sight of Bucky, closer now, and the shadow of a frown against his skin. Bucky’s face was like carbon paper, Clint was sure if he kissed his skin the imprint of his lips would hover there long enough that he could snap a picture. Bucky’s emotions stained his skin. Clint never wanted to assume Bucky was upset but the way the lines of worry scared his face make Clint’s stomach twist. But he did anyway. Bucky smiled at him though. As if to calm him, but it didn’t. 

Bucky stepped up onto the higher land and knew exactly what he was going to do. He was going to give Clint the ring. He would walk up to him and tell him he found something at the wreckage. He would hand Clint the ring and tell him he needed to go home. No more of this bullshit. No more waiting around. No more living like they only existed inside the painted glass. No more. Clint had to go home. He had to leave Bucky all alone on the little isle and he had to forget about whatever they had been dancing around the past month. Clint had a wife and a family. A life. But then Bucky saw Clint’s dopey little smile and his sea-blue eyes and everything left him. Just the idea of Clint leaving sent his heart into a panic. He forgot about the ring. He forgot about the widow. He forgot about the picket white fence around a lovely little house that he had built for Clint in his mind. Because Clint was here not there.

Clint watched Bucky drape across the marshland and closer to him. His face twisting and untwisting most fascinatingly. His eyes shifting from moment to moment as if he was fighting an invisible opponent. Dodging its terrifying moves and accusations. But finally, his eyes landed on Clint and the ocean calmed. Before Clint could register anything he was standing up. He was bracing himself for whatever Bucky was driving towards him in such a twisted rush. 

Bucky couldn’t stop himself. As he reached Clint, out of breath and exhausted, they were standing too close and Bucky gazed up at the man and huffed. Clint opened his mouth and Bucky knew what he was going to do. He was going to ask if Bucky was okay and Bucky wasn’t going to be able to lie to him. Not right now. He couldn’t lie to him. So he kissed him instead. 

Bucky grabbed onto the sides of Clint’s jacket and pulled him down and kissed him. It was desperate and forceful and Clint didn’t take long to get on board. He gripped onto Bucky’s hips and pulled him closer his hands travelling up and settling on Bucky’s face. Bucky felt the hot sting of Clint’s hands against his skin and wanted to fall into his arms. He wanted to be swallowed up by the ocean that was Clint and drown in him. Clint pulled away and gasped a little as he scanned Bucky’s face frantically. What for? Questions. Answers. Anything at all. Bucky had nothing to offer him but a breathless smile and a note in his eyes that betrayed him. But Clint didn’t notice that. Clint dove back in and kissed him harder hoping to show Bucky that he wanted whatever he had to offer. 

~

Clint pushed Bucky up against the nearest wall as soon as they were inside the warmth of the lighthouse. There was a moment of awkward fumbling as Clint pushed Bucky’s jacket off and slipped his hands into his hair and pulled him up for another searing kiss. Bucky complied trying desperately to ignore the nagging little memory of the ring burning him through layers of clothes in a heat. Clint pulled away again and smiled and for a moment he looked so young. Bucky couldn’t cope with how his youthful skin sung against his and how his eyes seemed completely untouched by any sort of heartache. Bucky knew, of course, that Clint had been through unimaginable things. But, he thought, he might not be able to understand them just yet. 

‘You okay?’ Clint asked, breathlessly. Bucky gulped before nodding fiercely pushing at Clint’s jacket and trying to go back in for another kiss. Clint laughed at him as he pushed him back against the wall. ‘Buck.’ His eyes darkened and suddenly Bucky was overcome with arousal. ‘You okay?’ 

‘Yeah. Clint. Yeah, I’m good,’ he stuttered out. Clint smiled, cupping Bucky’s cheek and laying his thumb against the man's skin. He left it there for a moment before pulling Bucky in for a soft kiss. They lingered there, like salt in the air, and Bucky wanted to cry. He wanted to push Clint away and tell him to stop. The softness of his touch suddenly too much. Suddenly too intimate. They weren’t just two people lonely and looking to get off…no Clint felt something and so did Bucky. The way his skin tingled under Clint’s touch and the way Clint looked at him. It was all a reminder. 

Bucky let his hand drift down to Clint’s waist and tugged at him softly wanting him to smother him. Wanting him to be rough and needy like he was before. Needing him to make Bucky forget what he was keeping from him. Clint obliged only slightly. Pulling at Bucky’s hair and half grinning at the explicit reaction he received back. 

‘You gotta talk to me, Buck,’ Bucky nearly went mad at the nickname. 

‘I’d rather,’ Bucky huffed and then averted his eyes. Clint laughed down at him and then noticed Bucky’s skin smudged with paint. 

‘I got you,’ he whispered, suddenly terrified of anyone hearing them. He wanted to laugh at the absurdity of the fear. Bucky could see, in his peripheral vision, the cracks starting the stretch up throughout the walls. Clint squinted back at him and his eyes floated around the shadow of them. If he was to stay still, Bucky thought, nothing would shatter, like a rabid animal standing on cracking ice. If he didn’t move. If he and Clint kept still and balanced against the rest of reality they wouldn’t fall through the cracks. The facade wouldn’t collapse. The mirage wouldn’t melt away. 

‘I think,’ Bucky said softly, his eye finding his way back to Clint and settling into the darkness of the room. ‘I can’t-‘ Bucky was finding it hard to even begin to tell Clint how he was feeling. How did he tell him that everything was a lie only being held up by the forever fracturing fragments of Bucky’s frail little head? Clint spread his large hand over Bucky’s skull and massaged his softly making Bucky’s whole body shiver. 

‘You’re so bad with words,’ Clint mumbled, drunk off the closeness of the other man. He had thought about this for so long his body was shutting down at the realness of it all. He kissed him again, harder but slower, trying desperately to understand what was going on inside Bucky’s head. The older man pushed back, shoving Clint off him and taking off his shirt and exposing the rough, tanned skin beneath his clothes. Clint reached out and spread his fingers across his chest and shoulders taking in every inch of skin. Trying to remember it. Clint leaned down suddenly kissing against Bucky’s neck and sucking at it desperate to leave a mark. Bucky struggled to get Clint’s jumper off as the other man attacked his neck. 

‘You’re a menace, Clint Barton’ Bucky grunted, pushing the man away again and pulling the jumper clean off and turning them both so that Clint was up against the wall. ’Stay still,’ Bucky let his hands rest against the man's hips and kissed at his chest and shoulders; taking his time to litter every inch of skin in soft little kisses. Clint let himself play with Bucky’s dishevelled hair and inhaled deeply as Bucky’s grip on his hips tightened. The older man stopped suddenly and rested his forehead against Clint’s neck and sighed. Clint couldn’t understand what they were doing. Tearing each other clothes off one second and stuck in a moment of intimacy the next. He closed his eyes and let himself be close to Bucky for a moment longer as Bucky twisted his head up and reached up to place his lips on Clint’s. He rested them there and didn’t move. Breathing against his bruised pink lips and letting his nose rest against Clint’s hot cheeks. 

‘Buck,’ Clint said softly against the other man's lips. Bucky laughed back, the little whisper of air ghosting across Clint’s lips and making him shiver. ‘Let’s go upstairs.’ Bucky nodded but didn’t move. He was scared of the glass shattering anymore. The ring burning through the moment. Clint’s hand drifted up and down Bucky’s back; calming him. Bucky couldn’t imagine beginning apart from the man now. Couldn’t imagine tearing himself away from him now that he got to feel his softest touches and most desperate gaze. The regret-filled him in an instant. If he had just given Clint the ring and just told him the truth then it wouldn’t have been this difficult to pull himself away. In the moment he couldn’t imagine pushing Clint away but, he knew, in the morning light there would be a profound realness in what he had done. There would be consequences for letting Clint think any of this was real. Clint might want him now but when he knows the truth when he understands exactly what Bucky had kept from him, he’d never forgive him. Bucky could barely begin to comprehend forgiving himself. 

Clint finally got Bucky to move, following him up into the living quarters not daring to go all the way to the bedroom. Clint thought about the moments they had touched leading up to this. Secret moments, accidental grazes and the meaningful way Bucky held onto him in the darkness of the lighthouse. This was all so different, Bucky giving in and letting Clint love him. Because Clint was sure of that now. He didn’t remember much, he didn’t remember anything really, but he remembered love. 

~

Clint lay in the lonely bed, the feeling of Bucky still lingering against his skin. The man was just above him, as he always was, surveying the sea and keeping watch over everything he could. But still, Clint felt his lips, his tongue, he felt his fingers and his hands. He felt Bucky everywhere on him. Like secret ghosting against his skin in the breeze. But he was safely in the warmth of Bucky’s bed, curled into the blank sheets and feeling himself slipping away. It was easier now. Now that he knew when he awoke Bucky would be with him again.

The soft sounds of Clint’s soundless sleep crept through the floorboards and up into the viewing room. Bucky, heavy-lidded and distracted, stared out against the starry night and tried to distract himself from the cold metal band in his hand. It sat against his palm and taunted him for all he had done. Bucky wanted to be downstairs, tucked up against Clint and distracted. Breathing in the soft scent of his skin the faint smell of shampoo that he had used to loosen the paint clumps in his hair. Instead, he was left alone in the stark acknowledgement of everything he had done. A carousel of options spinning around in his mind. Everything he should have done and everything he didn’t do. And in his hand lay the tiny little thing that was ruining it all. The remainder of Clint’s real-life…the life Clint didn’t even realise he was missing out on. Bucky had taken that from him. He had snatched away his chance at normalcy after the tragedy of the past month. Had stolen Clint’s happy ending. 

The sky was a twisted picture of blues and greys as the little sprinkling of clouds taunted Bucky; telling him to stay alert, stay awake unless you want to kill another man. Because wasn’t that exactly what Clint was? A dead man. Everyone would have stopped looking for him at this point. His grieving family laying flowers at the empty grave. A tombstone that told all that saw it about the loving husband, the beautiful son….the brother…maybe even the father that everyone missed. And Bucky was responsible. He may not have killed Clint but he didn’t keep him alive. He allowed him to float away into nothingness because nothing but this shell of a person. Someone who didn’t want to leave the horrible place he had landed on. Someone who didn’t mind being surrounded by the thing that nearly killed him. Someone who didn’t realise that all the feelings they were so moved by weren’t real. 

Across the creaky old floor was a loose floorboard. It would shuffle beneath anyone who walked across it and Bucky had never paid it close attention until now. He kicked it up and placed on the wooden slat the glowing little ring. The beautiful little thing. He stared down into the darkness of the floorboards and took in the sight. A little gleam into the blackness of it all. He slots the floorboard back into place and retreated to his seat.

How long could he let Clint believe he was all alone in the world. Would he wait until Clint remembered? Take every last drop of him that he could before he finally returned to his family. Would he tell him? Would Bucky admit that he kept all of this from him? Would he pretend he found the ring tomorrow? Or maybe a week from now? Would he pretend he found it in the rubble and told Clint straight away? Would he just never let Clint go? Keep him locked away in the sadness of his little snow globe. Killing him even more. For what? A little glimmer of happiness. A moment of peace when he first sees Clint in the morning. A little bit of life in the sadness of his existence. The questions swirled in his mind like a tsunami, one thought after another crashing into each other.

Bucky gazed out into the stars and imagined for a moment he was in space. Floating against the stars, following asteroids and comets in flurries of dust and starlight, watching planets turn and the stars shine. He thought, maybe it would be like this, maybe he could be a watcher of the stars instead of the sea. At least, maybe then, he couldn’t hurt anyone. Far away in the cosmos, surrounded by nobody or nothing…just moon dust and airless air. He couldn’t touch anyone there; couldn’t hurt anyone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yo, wtf.....I'm back....thanks to Gareth who introduced me to spriting and without him and the past god knows how many hours we have spent on discord this chapter would not be here. I'm not 100% happy with this one but I kinda worked it to death so enjoy the remains. once again I don't have anyone to beta this so it might be a disaster. 
> 
> hey if you wanna leave a little comment I love hearing from everyone even if it's only a few words or an expression through emojis! it makes my day when you lovely readers leave me little comments. 
> 
> till next time...


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DISCLAIMER:
> 
> Some of the warnings on this fic have changed pls check them out before you continue to read!!!

Clint was smiling down at him from the soft little spot on his chest. His slim fingers trailing across Bucky's neck and shoulders as he traced a little pattern onto his carbon paper skin. Bucky watched him with careful eyes as the younger man lay atop him and revelled in the warmth of his soft skin against his own. The late morning sun was hovering through the window, lighting up their little moment of shared intimacy. Alone in a forgotten tower, they lay still in the quietude of their pretty little tableau vivant. Bucky smiled at the picture. Clint's hair a mess atop his head in a boyish fashion, his eyes flickering around in that energetic way, his lazy smile spread across beautifully pink lips. Bucky, in that moment of forgetfulness that one experiences as they just wake up, was content. No longer burdened by the beating heart in the floorboards or the finite way their little romance was burning its way to the end of a very short match. Bucky awoke to the most beautiful eyes and patient smile and, for a moment, all was well. 

Clint noticed this. Bucky's forlorn shadow momentarily dust against the light, and all that was left was a soft sleepy smile and bliss behind the eyes. Clint had had a dream the night before of some sleepy twilight memory which was niggling the back of his mind wanting to reveal itself. Something haunting that was begging for some unnatural attention from him. But this perfect picture before him was enough to distract him, and Bucky seemed, for once, quietly peaceful. For Clint had only ever known a storm dispensed betwixt those very eyes and, for now, it seemed to have settled. 

'You mentioned the other day,' Clint said softly, trying desperately not to break the moment. 'About how you have no reason to go back.'

'Back where?' Bucky said dumbly, trying to avoid the topic. Clint tapped his cheek and smiled. 

'You know where.' Bucky sighed and shuffled a little feeling an ache in his back from steadying Clint on top of him. 

'I don't,' he started, 'I don't have any reason to go back there,' he tried to smile but not hard enough, and Clint's eyes hardened as Bucky's slipped away. 

'Your family? Friends? You told me about that Toro guy? How can you have no reason to go back?'

'Toro isn't my friend,' Bucky said, shifting his eyes away from Clint for a moment still acting like some closet dweller. 

'Oh,' Clint smiled, 'well that makes sense. Ten years is a long time.' He winked. 'Anyway, I still don't understand how someone chooses this life. Full time anyway. I get it because I've fallen in love with the place a little, but I don't understand how you could be alone out here all this time.' Bucky seemed to think about it for a while, and Clint could see behind everything that Bucky was still fighting something in his head. 

'When my parents found out I was gay,' Bucky's voice shivered at the end of the sentence. 

'Buck,' Clint said automatically feeling the other man's anxiety. 

'And well,' Bucky huffed suddenly. 'Sorry, I just…I've never told anyone this before.' Clint nodded softly as Bucky averted his eyes to the blankness of the ceiling. 'The look in their eyes. The way they reacted…it wasn't bad, but I could almost see the hope drain from their eyes,' Clint pressed his fingers against Bucky's jaw and softly cupped his face. 'They said it was fine.'

'It is fine.' 

'I know that,' Bucky laughed, letting his eyes drift back down to Clint. 'They were acting like they were fine. I mean their eldest son, 25 and ready to take on the family business, get married and carry on the family name, tells them that he won't do any of that because he loves men and I think that they hate me a little for taking that away from them.' Bucky nods softly as if accepting himself. 

'So, what? They made you unwelcome. You ran away?' Clint asked, but the older man seemed unable to answer. 'You sent yourself away.' Clint mumbled the realisation. 'You're punishing yourself.'

'No,' Bucky shook his head. 'I like it out here; I'm happy.'

'I think you're lying,' Clint whispered, and Bucky couldn't bear to look at him anymore. He glanced back up at the ceiling and found a quiet peacefulness in its vastness as if he was staring into the ocean. 

'I'm not. I know it's hard to imagine, but I didn't do this to punish myself or make them happy. It all just happened at the right time. So many opportunities came around y'know? To go out and work in the Isles, but I was always committed to my parents. But they didn't want me anymore, so I went,' Bucky huffed. 

'And now you can't go back? That sounds an awful like you are imprisoned here.' 

'Don't be ridiculous,' there was a slight venom in Bucky's voice as he stared intently at the ceiling. 

'I'm not,' Clint pushed Bucky's chin down so he would look at him again and smiled hopefully into the darkness creeping over the older man's brow. 'Did it ever occur to you that they didn't really care? That they didn't hate you or weren't disappointed or whatever excuse you've made up in your head for all this.' Clint glances around the room and saw the expanse of Bucky's so-called life over the past ten years and wanted to shake him. 

'What?'

'It just seems like, I don't know, you've done this to yourself. Nobody else. You might be content out here, but what if you were happier back there?' Bucky couldn't bear to think about it.

'I don't understand,' he admitted, his voice barely there, like a child. 

'Bucky you don't need to punish yourself every time you think you've done something wrong. You don't need to take that on or deal with it. If you've upset someone, they will punish you enough without you also offering a helping hand. What if you've sent yourself out here and nobody actually wanted you gone?' Clint asked, demanded even. 

'I'm not punishing myself.'

'Bucky, I don't think they were disappointed at all. I think they needed time, but I don't think they needed ten years.'

'I'm happy here,' Bucky tried desperately to assure himself. 

'Happy or just fine?' Clint cocked his head softly, and Bucky tried for a moment to ignore the feeling that crept up in his chest. The idea that someone thought he deserved happiness. 

'I'm-'

'You don't seem happy to me. You seem like you're surviving. You seem like you are just here. A ghost or a shadow of a person and that's while someone is by your side. Bucky I'm not sure you even existed before now,' Clint laughed. 

'I existed.'

'I know you did. But if you sent yourself out here because you thought you weren't needed anymore or wanted then that isn't a good enough reason to not exist,' he tried to reason with the madness of Bucky's own anxieties that spilled from the older man's mouth. 

'I exist.' 

'I know you do, but does anyone else know? If I hadn't been washed up on that rock front would you have just allowed yourself to rot here for the next forty years?' Bucky thought about it for a second but couldn't fathom an answer. 'You might not think so, but this is a punishment, being hidden away in this tower, and I hate to think about anything else you're punishing yourself about.' Bucky thought about the torment of the beating heart beneath the floorboard and the unclenching suction of that dread and grief for the life he had stolen from Clint and wanted to laugh at the idea of him not deserving any of this. Clint only saw a man with wild eyes and a sad story. He didn't see the secrets hidden just above them in the ceiling or the guilt etched onto his heart. 

'You think I'm going to go back now that you've shown up?' Bucky bit, playfully trying to ignore all the horrible feelings Clint had unearthed. 

'I'm not going to leave you here,' Clint whispered in the most terrifying sincerity. Bucky smiled because he had to. But he knew, once Clint realised the truth, that he would abandon the man to rot and never bear him another single thought except for the thankfulness when he glanced towards the ocean, that Bucky was imprisoned among the darkness of the deepest kind of blue; out there where the waves land. 

Clint had been distracted by this bird flouncing about the newly painted fence pecking away at the fresh layer of off-white with some vicious intent. The seagull was the size of a smallish dog and its wingspan terrifying as it squawked at Clint when he appeared at the doorway of the lighthouse. Its eyes beady and unnerving as it stared down the tall man with some animalistic look. Clint smiled as it patted its clawed feet against the wood and angrily waddled across the fence. He could hear Bucky clambering down the stairs, pulling on one of his lighter jackets, and moving up to glance over Clint's shoulder. 

'Gulls are evil, there used to be an old cat in the lighthouse, and the gulls would attack her whenever she dared to venture out. I ended up sending her back on one of the cargo ships that would bring supplies a few years after I got here. I was so scared they were gonna grab her and just take off.' Clint watched as the bird flapped it's wings up and down in some dance-like motion and take off up and then down the cliff. Bucky placed his hand against Clint's back as he moved around him and out into the warmth of the day. 'You sure you're gonna be okay?' Bucky asked. 

'No,' Clint laughed, staring down at his fate in the shape of broken shrapnel and the only pieces of his old life that remained. They two wondered the misshaped path in a comfortable silence which was filled with the sounds of the daytime. The rush of the ocean, that became a form of silence, and the gulls and the wind. At the edge of the harbour was the remnants of Clint's life smashed into oblivion and cut up into mounds like piles of dead autumn leaves. The walking stick was only a slight support now as Clint was able to hold himself up for most of the walk, but when he finally reached the main chunk of the boat that remained on the rocks, he felt his legs slip away from him. He still had no recollection of the crash or the events leading up to it, and while he had some sort of understanding of who he was he still didn't understand why he would be out this far out in the middle of the early morning. Bucky helped him down onto a ledge as he jumped down onto the rocks and began to lift the broken moments of Clint's life onto the marshland to sort through. 

Bucky tried hard not to imagine what else he could come across in the wreckage and with Clint watching him with dark melancholy glances in between watching the sea; there was this added pressure building at the back of his skull. The wood was falling apart in his hands from the corrosion of the sea and the wind. Half of the boat still stood on the rocks relatively untouched as if a basking shark had taken half the boat clean off and left the other half to float along with the algae and wash up on Bucky's isle. You could believe that if it wasn't for the splattering of splintering wood and debris that scattered up onto the marshland. Bucky approached the top half of the boat and glanced in to see nothing had changed since the last time he had looked in a few days after Clint swept up on the shore. He had gone to check there was nothing there that could help the man or Bucky understand who he was, but it was empty. Bucky lifted a plank of wood that seemed to be used as a seat and storage bench in one and found a bag. It was saturated and heavy with seawater. Bucky tossed it out onto the rocks and searched further. In the very far end of the box, there was a pile of papers that had been turned to much. The ink running away through the paper becoming unreadable and washed out from black to a haunting shade of grey.

Clint watched the sea flow back and forth and tried desperately to remember exactly what ocean they were amongst. Nothing came to him as he scoured his brain for some far away knowledge of this path of the murky blue, he found himself betwixt. He tried to remind himself to ask Bucky; but, as soon as he caught sight of the man, everything left him. Bucky stood only a few feet for him holding a bag. Clint tried to understand it. The blob of dripping blackness in the older man's hands. He tried to remember it, and nothing came to him, but, for some reason, it disturbed him. Bucky's eyes were plagued with something Clint didn't understand and, in that moment, he didn't care either. He reached out and grabbed it. It's cold sopping form causing him to cringe at the feeling of it between his fingers. He opened it. 

Bucky watched as Clint took out each item with a shaky apprehension. First was a square tin that was battered and old. Inside sat wet clumps of tobacco that had congealed together in some tar-like manner. Clint placed it back into the bag and took out a journal. It was expensive, leather-bound and almost delicate looking. The pages inside were soaked. The wonderful stories and secrets it held amid its leather edges lost to the sea. Clint stared down at it, willing for the words to reform in front of him; to dry out and simultaneously spell out his life. Lastly, Clint pulled out a pocket watch; golden and bright amongst everything else. 

'Is it yours?' Bucky asked, his voice rough and bitter against the coolness of the air. 

'I don't know,' Clint's words dropped from his mouth in some horrible way that filled Bucky with a dread. 'It says B.B,' Clint's voice is laced with some sort of quiet shrill as if something is falling into place for him and Bucky watched clenching his fist involuntarily. Clint stutters for a moment and then looks up at Bucky as if for answers. 'Do you think someone else was on the boat with me?' Bucky felt the entire world swirl around in front of him as if he had been suddenly swept into some typhoon. 

'Clint,' Bucky's voice was steady, but he felt of the precipice of collapse, 'I doubt it,' he lied. 'Maybe it belonged to someone, and they gave it to you.' He took a step forward and let his hand fall atop the cold metal. 

'You think?' Clint's eyes were pinned against the two of their hands cupping the pocket watch. 'I guess, it might be my dad's…I still can't remember his name,' Clint said softly. Bucky nodded. 

'Your dad's or grandfathers. It might be a family watch. Clint if someone else was on that boat with you we would have known about it,' Bucky continued to lie. 'There would be more stuff on the boat, not just this bag and it's very likely you both would've ended up washed up here,' he tried to reassure him, hopeful that the man didn't know the true unpredictable depths of the ocean. Bucky wouldn't be surprised if there were ten other men on that boat. But Bucky knew…he knew Clint was with someone. 

'B.B,' Clint whispered to himself. 'I don't think I'll ever know what it means.' Bucky slipped his hand up and let his thumb creep across Clint's hand in some sort of comforting gesture. Bucky looked away from the painful scene and stared up at the ocean and felt like crying. Because he knew; he knew who B.B was. 

Barbara Barton. 

Bucky wanted to scream. He wanted to curse everything around him for doing this. Clint sat next to him, unaware, trying to decipher something from the notebook, having completely disregarded the pocket watch once it sparked nothing in his memory. Bucky had built a fire near the lighthouse wanting to distract himself from the creeping knowledge of everything he was keeping from Clint. Although it was easier now, he thought, he was no longer selfishly keeping Clint from the truth but instead shielding him from the heartache that would soon catch up with him. The wife he forgot was likely dead. Lost to the storm that Bucky failed to protect them from. The blonde man had grown impatient at the drying pages and thrown the little leather book down next to the warmth and gazed unmoved into the flickering flames. Darkness crept in quicker now. Bucky recalled the long days that burned away above him for hours and hours alone of the isle. The shortening of the days was slow, but it made all the difference as the two sat out in the ever-darkening sky. The stars crept into place and the sun sunk beneath the ocean once again. 

There was nothing around. Not a single thing obscuring the view and so from corner to corner, horizon to horizon there was nothing but bright stars against dark skies. When they sat out in the nakedness of the night, it was as if they were amongst the stars and floating around in space. A dome of wonder surrounded them beautifully, and it calmed Bucky enough. Clint was still so entranced by the fire that when he looked up from it the light had gone, and he was overwhelmed by the sight of stars. As if the isle was their own personal planetarium. 

Bucky placed down some old blankets out on the grass and led Clint over to them after they had eaten. They lay, side by side, staring up at the sight before them; losing themselves amid comets and stardust. Bucky tried desperately not to think about the woman lost out in the ocean. The woman alone in those final moments, maybe even searching for her lost love. Maybe forgetting about him as he did her. Clint was in his own little world beside Bucky, but he wasn't troubled but instead fed up. The fear of the unknown still haunted him; but now, it seemed, he was close enough to the answers that it was if he could see the light at the end of the tunnel, but his legs had given in.

'My mum taught me how to read the skies,' Bucky said softly. 'The stars seem different every time you look at them, but really, they are exactly the same.'

'How do you mean?' Clint whispered back, happy for a distraction. 

'Okay, so,' Bucky shifted over so the two were as close as touching and lifted his arm so he could point. 'You see there? The stars are making a sort of rectangle shape,' Clint took a moment his eyes looking for some sort of recognisable shape and then suddenly it came into view.

'Yes,' he said, almost excitedly. 'I see it.'

'Good. Okay so coming off the far corner is a line, like a handle,' Clint nodded beside him. 'That's called the big dipper. And if you pay attention, sometimes you can see Ursa Major.'

'What's that?'

'Around the cup part of the big dipper is a bigger shape with a tail and little legs. It's hard to see at first, but it looks like an animal of some sorts; some say a bear,' Bucky's voice is so close but so distant Clint feels a desire to lean in closer. 

'What else can you see?' Clint asks, with some childlike wonder. Bucky laughs; shifting himself a little so his free hand brushes against Clint's.

'Well once you spot the big dipper and Ursa Major, you can then spot Ursa Minor also known as the little bear. You see the two stars that are the right side of the big dipper's cup?' It takes Clint a moment, but he soon finds it again. You have to follow the line of stars upwards; and then, well you see that bright shining star?' Clint nods slightly overwhelmed by the sight of it. 'That's Polaris. It's the northern star and its massive. Bigger than the sun. It only looks so small because it's so far away,' Bucky remembers suddenly sitting out on the hills during the night with his mother as she recounted to him the things he is passing on to Clint. She would talk for hours about the stars and the planets. 

'Tell me more,' Clint said softly, and Bucky did. He told him about the little bear and Orion. He taught him about the planets you could see from earth and the stars that shone the brightest in the sky. About Sirius, Deneb, Vega and Altair. The great square of Pegasus and the Andromeda galaxy. Clint lay there following Bucky's quiet little tour of the sky with heavy eyes and a quaint excitement. Bucky slid his hand into Clint's at some point and allowed himself to be anchored to him. The softness of his skin a small reminder of just how real this moment was and Bucky smiled as Clint tucked his chin onto his shoulder and let out a content little sigh. Everything was perfect on the surface, and the older man tried to hold onto that as he retold the stories of his childhood and clung to the other man's hand as if they are about to float into the air and become stars themselves. 

At once, Bucky was alone again. Some beautiful carousel his life had become and then when it got late enough for sleep to engulf Clint, as it always did, Bucky was left alone wondering the skies and simultaneously the day over in his head. The bag, Clint had all but abandoned at the edge of his existence, was bundled in Bucky's lap as some stark reminder. It had been hours, the weather was as still as the solitude of death, and Bucky felt his eyes grow heavy at the sight of the sun once again emerging from the blue. A hand pressed down against his back and, he turned to see Clint, sleepy and soft, behind him in some bubble of warmth, so inviting. A stark reminder of being alive. He trailed his hand around Bucky's shoulder as he walked towards the window and stared out, his bright baby blues gazing into the depth of the sea; he sighed. Bucky watched him, suddenly engulfed in the image. Clint, light and floating like only someone who is completely unknown could be. As if the experience of being brand new had elevated him from human to cloud, from mere man to some speck of pristine against the elderly universe. Bucky, however, was heavy. Weighed down by the knowledge, by the memories of being alive and aware. The sun shone around Clint, creating a heavenly silhouette against the bright glass of the window. Bucky wanted to tell him, while he was turned away from him, unreal and ethereal, wanted to admit, not to Clint but, to the inhuman spectre in his vision about all the things he had forgotten. 

But before the feeling could completely take him, Clint turned back to him and smiled. 

'We should go fishing today,' Clint mumbled, his voice rough and course in the daylight. Bucky nodded and watched as Clint sat in the chair opposite. A chair that had once sat unused at the desk in the sleeping quarters was now Clint's in their little make-believe life in the salt smothered pillar. 'Do you have a spare rod?' 

'Toro's is in the outbuilding,' Bucky thought about the dust-ridden place and felt akin to it. 'I don't think he'll mind you borrowing it.'

'I'm borrowing a lot more than just his fishing gear,' Clint's grin was so human it chilled Bucky. Like they were some normal beings, living a normal life, having these unimportant little conversations. Clint teasing him and throwing delicate glances his way with no thought for the consequences. Bucky laughed. Not because he wanted to, but because it felt like he was supposed to. As if to play his part in the charade. 

'You going back to bed or are you up?' Bucky asked, placing the bag down at his feet; he tried to ignore the way Clint's eyes caught onto it as he did. Clint looked back up as quickly as he looked away and smiled. 

'Are you kicking me out of bed?' His eyebrows pressed against the edge of his temples in some cartoon-like expression and Bucky could imagine himself, in that moment, living forever like this but, the thought was soon extinguished by the reality of the day. What a wonderful little five-act tragedy they have found themselves living. 

'Of course not.' 

Bucky sat, soft blankets against the nakedness of his skin, in the warmth of a sunspot shining onto the bed. Clint watched him, from his lying position, taking in the bright pale skin of his back and the dark mound of curls in contrast. Clint, exposed to Bucky entirely now, still felt like there was something Bucky was hiding from him. Some sadness he was keeping locked away from him, but he felt no need to pry. Bucky didn't owe him anything really and, if he did, he had already given Clint so much. How was he to ask for more? More of a man who had carved out a hollow spot in his chest just for Clint to live inside until he was brave enough to enter the daylight of real life. Bucky allowed Clint to hide out inside his little life and, no matter how much Clint felt a need to save him from it, he knew it might be himself that needed saving. What a wicked little game, Clint thought, for life to give them each other in this way. What he would give to have met Bucky ten years before. Clint sat up and pressed his cheek against the warmth of the skin on Bucky's back. What he would give to save Bucky from himself. The older man's muscles shifted in his back as Clint pressed a soft kiss against his back. What he would give to let Bucky save him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> turns out sprinting is what is going to save this fic. Once again thank you to Gareth, my saviour!!!! 
> 
> Once again I do not have a beta for this so pls accept my deepest apologies for the typos. 
> 
> Leave a comment if you want! I love hearing from people and it honestly keeps me going and updating! Ily all.


	7. Chapter 7

As Clint stared out into the ocean, he could see some other body of water within it; something calmer and softer. The coarseness of the ocean replaced with the lullaby softness of a freshwater lake. A memory floating atop reality as if to calmly remind him of his broken mind rewiring itself day by day. He could see, from the little spot the two men had perched upon, the opposite shore. The palpable reminder of the edge of the water which had been so absent from life thus far. A vision of calmness and some familiar warmth; he smiled. A small rowing boat floated on the lake with not a soul aboard and tethered to nothing. Clint pointed out towards it and his brother, nameless and still almost faceless, regarded it with a look of incurious disregard. The type of look older siblings learn from parents and mean spirited children. A look of 'I don’t care'. Clint was unbothered by it. He pressed his feet into the cool water and stuck his toes into the pebbles and sand that formed the shore. He revelled in the fresh air and the bright water against his skin. 

The two boys were in their swimming trunks, tucked beneath summer clothes, and itching to be submerged beneath the lakes murky but pleasant waters. Clint had watched fondly as his mother unpacked a blanket higher up on the stoop, and his father stood far off with some familiar look against his aged skin. When you are that young, you can’t imagine being old. Can’t imagine being the grown-up or the source of any sort of comfort, not the way a parent can be anyway. You could coo at a baby and kiss your mothers cheek while she cried; you could offer tissues as if they fixed a broken life or brought back the dead. Clint’s brother was climbing a tree further up from him, swinging like some primal animal from branch to branch and laughing loudly, allowing himself to be a child too. The young boy looked back out into the water and waited for his mother to apply sunscreen and tell him he was allowed to swim. 

Swimming seemed like some sort of luxury to kids like them. Kids who lived in the vastness of the dry countryside. No community pool for them to waste the warm summer away in. The seaside a little too far away and the ocean a little too rough this far north for swimming. The lake though, far away enough that swimming became a luxury, but close enough that the memory sparked a series of moments throughout his life. As he sat in the middle of the ocean; an adult now. 

Clint felt his mother's soft hands against his forehead, cupping his cheeks and rubbing against his nose. Smearing that familiar sunshine scented formula against his pale skin in an attempt to avoid the cries and wails of a child in an uncomfortable sort of pain. Clint’s brother stood at the edge of the water and stared out at the lake and nudged his shoulder. He wasn’t that much taller than him, he didn’t think he was that much older than him as he seemed young in the memories. A race to the abandoned boat, that’s what he had cried before he counted down from three and ran into the water until it was deep enough to swim. Clint followed him. As he relived the memory decades later, he had a feeling he would follow his brother anywhere. 

Suddenly, he was in the boat. Dry, cold and wrapped in some ugly green colour and his brother the same. His father stood at the edge of the boat and held his brother in place as he taught him the mechanics of the fishing rod for the third time that day. Clint watched, feeling small and useless, as his father swung back violently and cast the hook off into the calm waters. He could hear the spool of wire flick past and spin out in that familiar way. It echoed through the memory. 

‘My dad, he taught us how to fish,’ Clint muttered, standing on the long wooden pier of the isle where boats would come to dock. It sat not far from the harbour where Clint had been washed up, but it felt worlds away. The two men stood, the wind wicked but not overbearing, and watched the methodical waves of the serene sea. The white sea foam, composed of all the debris of life below them, curved lines into the deep blue, creating mosaics of the water. Bucky glanced over to him and smiled. 

‘Yeah?’ Bucky was an unexpected anchor, holding him in place and Clint smiled back.

‘Yeah, I think he was a fisherman,’ as the words fell from Clint he knew they were untrue. ‘No, he was a farmer. Someone else was a fisherman,’ he said this mostly to himself but he can feel Bucky’s dark eyes on him so he looks up. ‘I don’t know.’ 

‘It’s okay,’ his voice carried through the air with the wind and Clint glanced back out towards the sea and tried to conjure the memories once more. Pale skin reddening under the summer sun. Joyful cries of teenagers on the edge of adulthood pretending to be children. The sweet sound of birds and crickets talking back and forth. 

‘I don’t know what I’m remembering,’ Clint says to himself. Quiet enough that Bucky didn’t hear but loud enough so that any of the memories that hovered at the edge of his hippocampus could. Soon they would they walk back to the warmth of the lighthouse and Clint would forget about the lake for now and focus instead on the new life that had formed from the erosion of that fatal storm. A storm Clint would soon realise was more fatal than just the blankness of his life. 

Bucky was busying himself around the kitchen while Clint felt agitated by the lack of anything to do, and the other man seemed content with silence. He began to float through a tiny compartment that was the living quarters. Although he had been there for a month he still hadn’t really explored the lighthouse. Moving from the bed to the kitchen table back and forth like some scientific explanation of the momentum of losing yourself inside a wind tunnel life had abandoned you in. He took in the room. The windows letting in white light from all sides illuminating the dark and mousy colours. The line of old boots and stack of papers upon a side table that seemed older than time itself. A lamp, coated in a cloud of thick dust, that was only ever switched on when Clint found himself down here when it got dark. He was almost sure now that it had sat untouched before his arrival. What need would a nocturnal man, whose only job is to take watch of a pillar of light during the darkness, need with a little reading lamp in a room with big bright windows? At the edge of the room sat a bookcase, and it too was dusty and slightly crooked. Beside it, there was a vase that was yellowing around the edges, untouched. That’s what this place felt like. Clint thought as he wandered towards the far corner. This whole place was untouched. Bucky himself part of that momentum experiment falling into a swinging line of mental spheres and never falling off course. 

He came across a book that seemed familiar and pulled it free from the constraints of the tightly packed shelf. ‘Giovanni’s Room’. The words lay slant against the pale coloured cover, the worn pages gave way and gave Clint no option but to fall into the depths of its poetics. Bucky’s eyes flickered over and caught sight of the book and frowned, but he couldn’t begin to explain why. Clint sat in the armchair, long and oversized, and had to shift a few times to get comfy but then he opened the first page. 

“I stand at the window of this great house in the south of France as night falls, the night which is leading me to the most terrible morning of my life.”

Bucky was but a phantom in the background now as Clint tore through the pages. In the back of his mind, he wondered if he had read the book before. If he was someone to have bookcases packed full of paperbacks with broken spines and too many pages with the corner folded over. He wondered if Bucky had read this book before. The worn-out state gave that impression but, of course, Bucky had only been a resident on this isle for a decade and for a book, with its everlasting soul and indestructible essence, a decade was but a page in a chapter of a life. Clint felt himself become engrossed in the pages that turned smoothly through his fingers and, the words twirling in his vision. Bucky had started to play music at some point, and it only pushed him further into the story. The story of David stumbling across the beautiful Giovanni and how they locked themselves away in an apartment in France and tried to forget the lives they had left behind. 

A crack of thunder breaks the spell that had settled in the narrow place. Clint jumped from his spot on the too-small armchair and threw the book onto the table. Bucky looked up, calmer, and, with his expert eyes, regarded the darkening sky. The smell of soup filled Clint, and his stomach grumbled on command. The book forgotten and the music still a backdrop, he settled into a seat at the table as Bucky gazed out of the window and sighed. 

‘It looks bad. At least the heat makes sense now,’ he says it to himself with not much attention paid to the other soul in the room while he watched the newly birthed storm simmer of the edge of the isle. ‘There's this pub,’ Bucky began, turning back to Clint and dishing up dinner. 

‘Where?’

‘On the mainland near the harbour, it’s called the seashell,’ Bucky’s eyes misted over with some sort of clear and happy recollection, and Clint burned with jealousy. He wanted that, to remember, and in the same breathe he wanted to be inside the memory. To know Bucky before all of this and to be something he remembered fondly. 

‘Is it still there?’

‘Oh yeah, me and Steve we used to joke about buying it when we got old and no good to anyone,’ Bucky laughed, ‘he would talk for hours, a bunch of us squished between a booth for two, about how one day our children would go there and burn the midnight oil just like we were doing. Sharon would laugh, and she would snap a picture of us. Toro would beg Steve for a game of darts, and Steve would beat him every time. I would fight with Sharon over who got to chose the next song on the stupid player. She would shout about how Bob Dylan and David Bowie were depressing and then dance around me singing The Supremes over whatever song I played. Steve would always take her side, and I’d call them old and past their time. The old landlord would call last orders but would always give Steve the key to lock up because he was like that. Everyone loved Steve.’ Bucky blinked back into the room, back into this decade and smiled over at Clint with a softening gaze. 

‘How do you know it’s still there?’

‘Toro, he…we talk about things.’

‘You and him are you?’

‘We’ve been friends since we were kids, we grew up together, and we’ve always got each other's backs. I only really have him and my sister now.’

‘Do you love him?’

‘No, not like that. I think I did, but sometimes you grow out of love.’

‘How?’

‘Toro got married and had kids, and he’s happy,’ Bucky smiled, some genuine beautiful smile and Clint wanted to scream. 

‘So everyone gets to be happy but you?’ Bucky laughed at that, like Clint didn’t understand and maybe he didn’t. 

‘I’m happy, Clint. You seem to want a make a damsel out of me, and I’d like to remind you that it was me who dragged you out of the sea and saved your ass.’

‘I remember. Sorry, I just…’ Clint smiled and shrugged and that was enough for Bucky.

‘Anyway, I’m not damning myself to this you know that right?’ Clint nodded softly and took a rough slice of bread and tore at it. ‘You never let me finish my story,’ Clint lay out a hand and signalled for him to continue, ‘One night we were there late, and everyone had been gone for hours, it must’ve been 3 in the morning, Steve and Sharon were playing this stupid card game they made up and betting peanuts they stole from behind the bar. I was up on this ledge of a window smoking, and suddenly the heavens opened. I’d never seen rain like that on the mainland, and I could see, from the little gap, the sea heave and tow, and I closed the window and shouted at Steve. He threw open the doors, and at that, a lightning strike fell from the sky, and it exploded in front of us. It attacked the gravel and spun in this flashing sort of torment. Then the whole sky lit up, and, for a moment, it was like daylight. Anyway, Steve made us camp out in the bar until the storm passed and it took till the morning. We lay in the booths and sang songs and drank until our arms wouldn’t hold up the glasses to our mouths,’ once again, Bucky was in another world, and Clint watched on; amazed by even the idea of it. ‘Every time it storms I think of that night.’

‘I bet the hangover was something to forget,’ Clint chimed brightly. 

‘I was 21, I didn’t feel a thing but Steve did and we tormented him while we walked back home. The fresh sea air cleaned out with the storm and the air cold against the warmth of our alcohol breath. He threw up on my shoes, told me that one day I’d be old and hungover and he’ll laugh at me, and I told him that if I was hungover he’d probably be comatose,’ Bucky’s laughter was light but strained in a sadness that must’ve, Clint, guessed, haunted every memory of the dead man.

Bucky yawned deeply as he cleared away the plates and watched the storm from the window. Clint, up on his feet, moved across the room and behind Bucky. He settled a hand on the man's waist, the intimate moments still cursed with some nervous energy, Bucky’s movements stuttered at the touch. He turned his head to the side and smiled up at Clint who, for a moment, become lost in the turn of the storm. He glanced down to Bucky and tightened his hold. 

‘You didn’t sleep well last night,’ he said softly. ‘What if I took this shift?’ Bucky’s eyes scrunched at the question.

‘There's a storm, Clint. I can’t risk it.’ He turned quickly back to the kitchen and busied his hands and then after a moment. ‘Maybe when it’s passed,’ he mumbled. ‘Maybe we can take a shift then.’ Clint smiled but didn’t move away. Instead, he leaned in and lay his head in-between Bucky’s shoulder and neck; straining a little at the contact but humming against him. 

‘Why don’t we go to bed,’ Clint mumbled into against skin. Bucky sighed, suppressing a shiver as the other man's words tickled bright up his neck. 

‘It’s 6 pm, Clint, we cannot go to bed,’ he rests his hand against the edge of the countertop, gripping it until his knuckles went white, all thoughts of cleaning up gone in a moment. 

‘Not to sleep,’ Clint whispered, and all Bucky could do was laugh and then slowly turn towards the warmth. 

Bucky left Clint asleep and traipsed upstairs, wrapping himself up in a blanket, there wasn’t much sunlight left, but it hovered at the edge of the horizon and Bucky watched carefully as the storm twisted closer. He could hear the howling of the wind as it screamed against the windowpane. The sound shook Bucky back to the last time he had heard it. As Clint, a faint stranger roamed the circular hell in which they both had become imprisoned in. A murky time where Clint was nothing but a feather-light reminder of life in the vast distance and the much heavier aide-memoire of the mistakes Bucky had made. The heat of the moment passing and the darkness of the storm falling upon them one last time; it felt like anyway. Bucky couldn’t help but think how much he wished for the mellow sunshine to blister once again. The storm brought him Clint, and it brought Clint tragedy. What would it bring them this time?

The ocean terrified him. It was beautiful and vast and all-consuming, and sometimes it created new blues that Bucky had never seen and probably would never see again. It was full and wonderful and spilt from its chalk outline borders and bundled in some mystifying melody. It was easy to fall in love with the ocean, but it took something deep, some unrelenting exposure, to make a man terrified of it. He stared out and was consumed by the thought. What are you bringing us this time? What will you do? 

Below him, Clint was awoken by the all-consuming roar of the storm and felt too that strange remembrance of his first week on the isle. It felt like years had passed since then. The long solid moments of silence the idea of not knowing is absolutely brand new. Clint spending hours desperately trying to work out what was going on inside his mind. And now he spends that time trying to decipher the same from Bucky. He guessed that that is what he had been trying to do for the past month. So desperate to know things, was Clint’s brain, that he wanted to dissect the older man's thoughts and press them into glass and preserve them forever. He wanted to know things. Was this what life was like all the time? Was this what it was like to be alive? Was this what he had been missing? Unmovable want for a person and everything they had.

Clint shook his head and pulled himself out of bed. With the light escaping from the windows, he knew Bucky was above him, as always, and he made his way to the living quarters below and found the book he had been reading before exactly where he had left it. Back in bed, he twisted up so that he could use the light of the receding sun to read. The words a tangle of prose. Soon the sun faded, but it was replaced, as always, by its artificial counterpart and that worked just as well. It fuelled Clint into the night and, as his eyes began to sting, he found himself recalling the first line of the book. How powerful it had been to sweep him up into the tide and wash him into the sea of words. 

“I stand at the window of this great house in the south of France as night falls, the night which is leading me to the most terrible morning of my life.”

And as Clint lay beneath that window and slipped into a dream-filled sleep, he was a stranger to the fact that the night was leading him to the most terrible morning of his life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the next chapter will hurt
> 
> Please read Giovanni's Room if you haven't!
> 
> hey if you wanna leave a little comment I love hearing from everyone even if it's only a few words or an expression through emojis! it makes my day when you lovely readers leave me little comments.
> 
> till next time...


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> it's done; i never want to think about lighthouses or the ocean ever again.

A floodgate opens. Somewhere something clicks into place and, for a moment, it is blue skies in twilight. Then comes the darkness in sharp and painful rushes. A sedated sleep twisted into some sort of freakish recollection of everything; everyone. A brow creases into unfathomable pain, but if no one is there to see it; then what? Ugliness and life, birth and sorrow, sickness and health, beauty and death. A life lived in a single second. As a storm furrows into a roar and sparks fly and seas collapse into one and other. As an alarm sounds deep in the distance between fog and sour rain. As the wind whips into some twisted shape and form that resembles something so unforgettable. Clint remembers. 

Clint remembers love, a beautiful thing that flurries in his heart. The carousels she kept in her eyes as she lay beside him on fresh grass. The curve of his neck as sunlight drifted through windows. He remembers Bobbi and her sweet scent and heartbreaking laughter. He remembers her love and his love and, within all of that, he is given the shape of Bucky. The way his eyes would settle onto him in the quietest of moments. A look Clint was never able to recognise and a feeling he was forever unable to place. Until he remembered love. 

Clint remembers life. His mother's blonde curls in his tiny hands and her rose coloured cheeks against the sun. His brother's yelps of joy and borrowed eyes. The way he would furrow his brow and darken his look in a way that sparked a fire of mischief. He remembered being alive and breathing and all those things he forgot the understanding of on his brief trip into oblivion. A traffic jam of memories filtered through his fragile mind reminding him of all the things he had missed, clarity and wonder gifted to the moments where he felt so unsure of how a man, a broken one for sure, was supposed to feel. And as they revealed to him an understanding they also, in tow, unleashed the torment he had feared. 

The scream was painful. It cut through the isle and the orchestra of the ocean halted as Clint’s distress rang throughout the air. Echoing near perfectly and sound of the foghorn. He is out of the bed before he can even begin to fathom his thoughts and all he can think is. 

‘I have to get to the boat!’ The words startle Bucky from his thoughts. Clint screaming out into the darkness of the lighthouse and simultaneously a bolt of lightning electrifies the air. Casting bright daylight into the place with shadows of death and life. Clint sees everything in front of him and continues to run. Bucky follows quickly but he can’t find the other man. He makes it down towards the sleeping quarters and searches in the darkness for Clint but he was gone. The living quarters dead still and unmoving. A door below Bucky shattered shut and the cool air whipped up through the lighthouse and a shiver shook through him. Bucky’s legs couldn’t keep up with his mind, images of Clint against the rocks, floating amongst the storm and finally lost seeped into eye-line. He shouted out after him. 

Clint could hear Bucky behind him but it never fully took hold. It was just another sound within the chaos of his brain. The rain and wind collapse into him and he shakes against it. He is near-naked in a storm but feels nothing at all. Nothing apart from a striking pain in his chest. Bucky’s arms curl around him and pull him back towards the lighthouse and, at first, Clint lets him. His eyes passive and terror-stricken. Confusion seeping from every single pore. 

Bucky is soaked in a matter of seconds, the rain is falling from the navy blue night sky in sheets of glass. He searches the taller man’s eyes for something instead of asking. Clint, breathless and shaking, turns back out towards the rain and heaves in a wheezing breath. He takes off again, suddenly and so quickly that Bucky can’t catch him before he is running down the path. His bare feet stomping against the crooked ground and finally, he reaches the marshland and he spots the rocks. The man, a bright beacon of pale skin in the darkness, Bucky follows, unable to keep himself completely upright, skidding against the mud and acidic rain’s fatal melody. Clint stands still long enough for Bucky to reach him but before he could touch him, and pull him back into the reality of the storm, Clint falls. 

Knees against marshland and palms to the sky he shakes in a rigid breath. Bucky all but latched onto his back, protecting him from the cold and the rain. Clint turns his head and shouts over the wind, trying to pull himself free of Bucky’s grip. 

‘I need to get to the boat!’ Bucky’s hands fall over the man's chest keeping him close and protected as best he can. This doesn’t halt the other man’s desperate struggles as the two become drenched in mud and rain the older man tries to reason with the storm. 

‘The boats gone Clint.’ 

‘I need to get h-’ Clint stops mid-sentence, a realisation slips over his eyes like the curtain falling upon the ending of the final act of this great tragedy. ‘I remember,’ he whispers, 'oh god I knew I didn’t want to remember.’ 

‘Remember what Clint?’ Bucky asks their voices now tiny blips among the howling storm. 

‘That night on the boat. I wasn’t alone,’ Clint turns now towards him and Bucky loosens his grip as he does. Clint holds steady against the wind and then finally he looks up at the other man; still crouched in some futile attempt at the sanctuary. Bucky knew what Clint had remembered but still, he played out the charade. ’I was, oh god Bucky.’ It was hard for him to distinguish the tears from the rain but still, he reached out to wipe them from Clint’s cheek. ‘I can see it, the boat was out of control and we didn’t know about the storm. We saw the isles and we thought we could make it but then,’ his eyes darted out to look upon the ocean and he gasped. The waves against the rocks and the torment which was a caterwaul of wind above them set everything into place. The darkness was a nightmare and the patches of light from the rising sun, behind thick clouds, only shone dull enough to show the two the deadly sea and the cracks in the glass above them. ‘I wasn’t alone,’ he repeated. 

‘Who were you with?’ Bucky asked, even though he already knew.

‘I was trying to grab- I was so close but I couldn’t hold on.’ Bucky watched on as the man relived the moment again and again. ‘Everything was soaked and wet and I couldn’t hold on. I tried!’ He yelped out towards the ocean as if to explain. ‘The wind, I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t grab…’ Clint breathlessly stuttered off and then finally after a moment he found clarity. ‘He’s dead.’ 

‘What?’ Bucky said, without thinking. 

‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’ Clint looked back up at Bucky and his eyes had lost all emotion; all that was left were hollowed-out graves for which not even he could be laid to rest. 

‘Who?’ Bucky’s confusion, although now real, seemed unimportant to Clint as he pulled himself up and looked back out into the ocean. 

‘I left him out there,’ a small bitter laugh escapes him. ‘I forgot about him, I let myself hideaway with you and I let him die. I-’ Bucky, falling into his eye-line, shook Clint’s shoulders.

‘Who Clint? Who were you with?’ 

’Barney,’ he said softly, as if for the very first time.

Clint lay still as he could, submerged within the depths of water, and held his breath. The only thing he would hear was the storm, it filled every little gap with sound, and the only thing he could feel was the water. Bucky sat beside him, on his knees, pushing warm water up onto his neck and face. He had cleaned all the dirt from Clint, quietly with his soft eye worrying against the younger man's blue skin, and then submerged him in the warm bath trying desperately to stop the man from shaking. Although he knew, it wasn’t just the cold that was causing his body to betray him. Bucky’s hands were a familiar presence against Clint’s brand new skin and he tried to find comfort in it. The light of the day was bright through the windows but still, the weather remained a stark reminder of Clint’s own crumbling mind. 

‘Clint?’ Bucky was the first to speak as he noticed Clint’s eyes wash over in a glaze. Clint blinked. Once. Twice. And then he reached out, his damp fingers grazing Bucky’s face. 

‘You’re so cold,’ Clint whispered. The brunette closed his eyes on instinct and leaned into the comforting touch. ‘Get in,’ his voice was suddenly sure of itself. 

‘Clint, no,’ Bucky pushed himself up and grabbed at Clint’s hand. ‘Just stay there.’

‘It’s warm, please Bucky. You’re so cold,’ Clint went to stand but his legs gave out beneath him. He steadied his hand on Bucky’s shoulder and then let out a wet whimper. ‘I don’t want you to get sick,’ he continued. ‘It was my fault you were even out in that, I shouldn't.’ Bucky pressed his hand onto Clint’s chest to calm him. 

‘Okay,’ Bucky whispered. Clint watched the man step out of his thermals and dump them into a pile of muddied clothes that sat stale in the corner. Clint moved, malleable against rough hands, and Bucky slipped easily into space behind him. The tub, old and grande, spilt water from its edges but soon settled and so did Clint into Bucky’s chest. They sat in the stillness of that white pillar, within the depths of the calmest waters for miles, and let the wind sing them a folk song against the straining glass of the windows. Bucky tucked his arm around Clint’s torso and tries desperately to feel the warmth of him. But their cold skin seemed too far gone and even the steaming water couldn’t touch them now. 

‘What am I going to do?’ Clint said softly, turning slightly to gaze at Bucky who was quick to lay a soft kiss against his wet hair and then another against his ear. He offered no answer and so Clint continued. ‘How could I forget about my own brother?’ A memory flickers over the moment. Clint following his brother down a wooded path, still children, and his brother stomping against the ground with determination and adventure nipping at his heels. Clint followed, as he always did, his brothers brightness a flare in the darkness. Barney turns towards him and suddenly he is older, his eyes bore the scars of age with grace and dignity. He laughs bright, a glass in his hand, as he leans forward to grab at Clint’s shoulder. Clint wants to lean in but as soon as he does the memory turn to steam. 

‘You landing on those rocks, me finding you, your brother not having the same fate, that is not your fault,’ Bucky’s voice rattles him for a moment. He can feel Bucky’s lips against his shoulders and then, suddenly, everything is still. 

‘My brother died alone, out on that water and I-’

‘Shhh,’ Bucky’s lips moved against his skin and his hands linked with Clint’s, pulling him back into the present. ‘You couldn’t have done anything to save him; you were helpless.’ The older man’s lips moved onto his neck and then into his hair again. Clint leant back against him and let his eyes shut; praying for a cessation of the memories. 

Bucky watched him sleep, curled up into a ball like a child, an exhausted frown burning into his skin and staining it. Clint was snoring softly but the other man could barely hear him over the harsh howl of the storm. He watched him with some unexpected familiarity; as if they had been right in that moment a million times before. But soon it was overwhelmed but the thought of the blonde's heart belonging to someone else. Because if Bucky tried hard enough, he could imagine holding all the pain and hurt the other man would or could ever feeling in the palm of his hand. Holding it there and keeping it so that it couldn’t touch him. But it didn’t belong to him. Bucky leaned across the bed and touched Clints, now warm, cheek and tried desperately to remember the feeling of it beneath his fingers. To remember every pore and scar, every freckle and blemish. To remember the way his breathing stuttered when he kissed him. To remember the way he would smile at him when he thought Bucky couldn’t see. 

Clint's eyes flickered open and, after a moment, his eyes settled on Bucky. Then the blue orbs floated up towards the storm outside and flinched at it. 

‘I need to go home.’ Is all he said and Bucky nodded softly and let himself pull away from the other man; never expecting to touch him again. Clint turned back and watched him descend the stairs towards the lower quarters where the radio was kept. He heard the static and then Bucky’s deep voice rumble some melancholy. He closed his eyes and tried to rid his mind of one foul memory at a time. His brother’s hand slipping from his. The way his eyes screamed as he was ripped out to sea. His frantic voice that seemed to rattle on for hours. Clint scrunched up his face and blew out a static breath. He tried to think of anything else but the scene played over and over again in his head. Stuck on a never-ending loop.

‘They said they’ll head out as soon as the storm settles.’ Clint opens his eyes and sees Bucky, nervously floating at the edge of the room. He wants him, so miserably, to lie next to him. To hold him in his strong and comforting embrace and tell him stories. Tell him about Steve and Toro. About his sister. To retell old stories, to read to him, to sing to him. He just wants Bucky to take over every single sense and block out everything else; even the sun. But, instead, the man nodded curtly, as if the two were strangers. 

‘I need to keep watch during the storm, will you be okay?’ Clint nodded, even though he hated the idea of Bucky being so far away, and then Bucky left as quickly as he came. The blonde shifted towards the window again and watched the storm twist and dance against the sky and then, after hours, disperse; leaving only the gleaming sunlight and all those the soundless sounds. 

Once the isle is silent Bucky can hear Clint’s soft snores and decides he could probably sneak out. Unable to bear the mans sad eyes and clarity, he moves as silently as he can through the lighthouse and out into the blustering outside. The air strong and scentless, like after all storms, and the ground giving way underneath his feet. The only trace of that morning's secondary storm being their footprints unrecognisable in the mud. Bucky tried to see something that he recognised in that moment but everything was drenched in the memory of Clint. Nothing was the same. Not the harbour or the marshland or the few scattered trees. Not the outhouse or the fence. Not his bed or his own skin. He recognised nothing from before the man landed on those deadly rocks all those weeks ago. 

Bucky wanted to curse himself for the feelings that had bloomed so deeply within him. He wanted to tear out his own chest; make it hollow again. He never thought for a second that Clint would be forgotten forever. Bucky didn’t live in some silly little fantasy for a moment too long; he was always carrying that ring, and all that it meant, in his mind. But he thought he may have had a little longer. Although a little longer would have done nothing for him, he knows now, it might have made the ending a little bit harder. He turned back towards the door and thought about climbing the stairs and taking Clint by the shoulders and telling him about all of these crazy thoughts. Telling him how he wished to keep him captive in this stupid little fantasy for a little longer. He wanted to expose every passive thought and slight feeling. He laughed and then walked back towards the warmth. 

Clint wasn’t in the bed when Bucky crept past which sent his heart off the rails and then deeper into oblivion when Clint wasn’t in the viewing room. He finds him, instead, out on the catwalk. His hands gripping onto the metal railing as if to stop himself flying away on the wind. From up there, they could see everything and with blue skies after the storm, you could almost imagine the mainland just past the horizon. Bucky watched the shape of him, a dent in the wind, shivering against the cold; wrapped in Bucky’s clothes that had, over the weeks, become his. 

‘Do you remember anything else?’ Bucky says, suddenly. Clint does turn but his shoulders hitch for a moment and Bucky decides to join him at the edge of the metal platform. ‘Anyone?’

‘What do you mean?’ Clint mumbles against the wind, not looking at Bucky. 

‘I didn’t mean anything, I was just asking.’

‘I remember everything Buck, and everyone,’ he turned his head and frowned. That was all the confirmation Bucky needed. ‘Do you mean on the boat?’

‘No just, forget it.’ Clint reaches out to touch Bucky’s arm but he pulled away in one swift movement. 

‘No, you…what did you mean Bucky?’ The wind shifts around them and suddenly things are quiet and Bucky can feel Clint’s stare and the question that lingers too long. Bucky wants so badly to run away from him but where could he go?

‘I found your wedding ring,’ the words fell out so quickly he couldn’t even try to stop himself. Clint’s eyes flickered with some unrecognisable emotions and then he took a soft step forward. 

‘What?’

‘I found it on the marshland.’ He can see the ring now, sitting underneath the floorboard, beating like some untamed heart, mocking him. 

‘When? Last night?’ Clint almost offered Bucky a way out. He could just say yes and then suddenly everything would be fine. Clint would go back home in a few days unaware of the secrets Bucky had kept from him. 

‘No,’ Bucky said finally. ‘A few weeks back,’ the truth tumbled from his lips, Bucky having no say in the matter anymore. 

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Clint seemed calm. His head was cocked slightly as if only slightly confused about the confession and his eyes were soft and fragile like they always were.

‘I didn’t know how to,’ Bucky flinches at his tiny voice amongst the silent loudness of the isle. Clint nods sharply and then looks out towards the sea. The older man feels everything inside of him slip away like that final piece of thread that was holding them together had finally snapped. Bucky had ruined everything.

‘Bobbi,’ he says softly, a slight smile gracing his face. 

‘What?’

‘Her name is Bobbi,’ Clint turns again towards him and shrugs. ‘She was the love of my life.’ 

‘Was?’

‘We didn’t work out,’ Clint whispered. ‘Night before the wedding we were sitting out on this little strip of land between my parent's farm and her grandfather's house. That’s how we met as kids. And she lay her head on my shoulder and told me she didn’t think she loved me enough.'

‘Oh,’ Bucky tried to imagine it. Tried to imagine Clint a young man the night before his wedding. Tried to imagine his beautiful wife and their future set out in front of them. Tried to imagine how it felt not to love Clint Barton enough.

‘I loved her though, I still love her now.’ Bucky expected Clint to be sad but instead, the man was smiling in some stupid little way. His mouth bunched up into a tight, mischievous grin. 

‘Clint?

‘But she was right. I didn’t love her enough either.’

‘I don’t understand?’

‘You see we loved each other and we cared for each other. But we weren’t in love. We were making the best of our situation and doing what we thought our families wanted. I carry the ring with me because, well because it was a reminder.’ 

‘A reminder of what?’

‘Of what we were both really looking for,’ Clint glanced up at Bucky, ‘to remind me of that feeling I never felt for her. That different kind of love.’ 

‘Did you find it?’ Bucky asks, scared of the answer.

‘She did,’ he smiled, ‘she found it and she looked beautiful inside of it. Love makes a person shine,’ Clint seemed lost in a memory and then, all at once, he falls out of it. ’Why did you keep it from me?’

‘I don’t know, I- I was going to tell you at first but then,’ Bucky stumbles. 

‘What?’

‘I kissed you,’ he frowns. Clint nods softly and thinks for a moment, never looking away from Bucky. 

‘So, what? You kept that from me because? You were scared I would run off?’ Clint’s voice was soft but oh-so loud and clear. Bucky felt frantic and hopeless all at once. ‘You were? Weren’t you? You thought I’d abandon you here? Like everyone else,’ Clint turned away suddenly and stared down at the ground. A plummeting feet of air and sea salt between the two of them up on the catwalk and the marshland below. 

‘Clint,’ the older man said after a moment. 

‘You think I’m just going to leave you here?’ Clint explained to the ground. 

‘Aren’t you?’ Bucky took a step towards him, the catwalk creaking beneath his weight. He felt sick asking the question that he had always known the answer to. 

‘No,’ Clint whispered so quietly Bucky could barely make it. ‘Why the hell would I do that? Why the hell would I!’ Clint shouted at nothing. ‘I wouldn’t!’ He said before Bucky could answer him. ‘You know why? Because this isn’t just some circumstantial fling Bucky.’

‘Clint don’t,’ Bucky shook his head softly. 

‘I love you!’ He gripped onto Bucky’s shoulders yanking him forward and keeping him in place. ‘And the funny thing is, I think it took me remembering everything about my life before I knew you, to realise it.’ Bucky blinked. ‘I know that I love you,’ Clint said without even thinking. Something even more complex fell over Bucky and Clint would die to know what it was. ‘I know that you love the sea,’ Clint smiled. He needed Bucky to know that he knew. He knew enough to want this and want everything he had daydreamed about. He might not know everything, but one person rarely does. 

‘I’ve never loved anything in my life,’ Bucky said softly and Clint laughed.

The days passed quickly and the men never truly fell back into the old tides and sways they had comfortably created. Bucky never responded to Clint declaration and Clint was okay with that. Bucky told him at some point that everyone thought he was dead on the mainland and that there had been a search party for weeks but they weren’t searching far out enough. The storm has swept their boat miles off course. Clint let a little loop of his brothers final moments play over and over again in his head and soon he became numb to it. His brother had been dead for a month now if he was counting right, and there was nothing he could do. Bucky had stayed close to Clint as if he was ready at any point to talk about their moment on the catwalk. He wasn’t. Although one night, when he thought Clint was asleep, he had kissed him on the forehead and told him he would follow him to the end of the earth and then went upstairs to watch over the seas. 

The open invitation lingered in the air like some magical thing and Clint was waiting for Bucky to decide. Was he coming with him? The closer and closer the boat got to the mainland the more Clint began to accept that Bucky wasn’t. The night before the boat was to come Clint stayed awake with him in the viewing room. Allowing himself one last night in their little daydream. The tableaux in which Bucky existed and Clint had found himself playing such a vital part within. He wished the hours to slow to nothing and for time to stand still. To allow him to stay forever in that moment. Clint sitting across from Bucky, a portrait of sadness, admiring him like some lost artefact finally found amongst the wreckage of a tragedy. A chest full of honey and starlight. Bucky smiled over at him and whispered, over the little space that fell between them, about the stars and the planets as if Clint was the one who had hung them so delicately in the darkness of the night. 

They stood on the pier, the boat anchored and waiting, and Clint wanted to scream. He wanted, in that very moment, to hit Bucky, He wanted to cry. Bucky touched his arm so lightly and smiled as he spoke with the lifeguard who seemed unfazed and impatient. He soon disappeared into the belly of the ship and left the two of them alone once more. Clint could barely look at him when he asked. 

‘Are you coming?’ His voice was weak and shattered. 

‘Yes,’ Bucky said after a beat. Clint turned to him and frowned. 

‘Bucky, you’re not lying to me you can’t-’ Bucky gripped onto Clint’s shoulders and held him there. 

‘I’m coming. I promise,’ he smiled weakly. ‘I’ll be back in the mainland by the end of the month. I just need to sort things out.’ 

‘Really?’ Clint’s eyes, childlike and wide, made Bucky’s heart stutter in his chest. ‘How will I?’

‘I’ll find you, okay?’ Bucky’s hands drifted down his arms and entangled with the other mans shaking hands. 

‘You can take me to that pub,’ he whispers. 

‘The seashell? I’ll buy you a drink.’ Bucky smirks, his thumbs tracing treasure maps on the back of Clint’s hands. 

‘I’d like that.’ Clint turned towards the boat and sighed. The only things he had were his brother's bag and some clothes from Bucky; he hadn’t thought to bring anything else. His life lay dormant, back of the mainland, ready for him to pick up where he had left off. ‘Buck,’ Clint said suddenly, remembering something. 

‘Yeah?’

‘I never finished the book.’ He could see it now, the book half-finished laying on Bucky’s bedside table collecting dust between it’s thin and worn out pages. 

‘It’s not that interesting,’ Bucky smiles, but Clint notices something different flicker across Bucky’s eyes. 

‘Do they get a happy ending?’ He asks. He knows that the book seemed doomed from the start but he had hoped while reading about the beauty of Paris in the 1950s, that somewhere along the line a miracle would happen. Bucky opened his mouth and then closed it again, thinking about his answer. Clint cocks his head but as soon as he does the older man leans forward and smiles. Bucky took in every feature on Clint’s face slowly and carefully before speaking. 

‘They got their happy ending,’ he lied. Because of course he did; Clint deserved a happy ending. How could he tell him, while they stood on the edge of oblivion, that David killed Giovanni? That David went back to his old life and left Giovanni to rot in the room they once shared. The room that had become the only place in which the two of them could exist. How could Bucky tell Clint that they never made it? That nobody gets a happy ending; not even them. 

‘Good,’ Clint smiled. There was a moment where the two stood still, swaying only with the wind, gazing only at each other; putting off the inevitable. Clint pulled away first letting Bucky’s hands go one finger at a time. He smiled, silently hoping that Bucky would just follow him there and then. Get on the boat and abandon the isle just like he had the mainland a decade before. But he knew that was wishful thinking. He knew that, until he saw Bucky again, he would never really know if he was lying to him and he knew he’d wait forever to find out. 

From where Bucky stood, all he could see was the ocean. There was nothing else in his view but deep blues and purples and the lonely figurine that stood between him and it. Everything was right in front of him, bright and clear for him to take in, and, once again, the clearness of the morning was in his favour. There was some glittering sunlight sparkling off the edge of the water making Clint look like a vision; a mirage Bucky’s brain had created out of loneliness. 

His hands stinging from the sudden loss of contact and his eyes tingling at the sight, Clint walked aboard the boat with a shaky demeanour. Behind Bucky stood the lighthouse, the tall white pillar signal in the middle of everything, a sight Clint had grown well aquatinted with but not yet bored of. It was crooked and faint against the whiteness of the sky. Closing his eyes against the brightness, Clint wondered how he would fare on the mainland with its dark skies and silence. How would he cope without the harmony of the isle? The way in which the ocean would sway and tumble this far out. Without the blackness of the night and the whiteness of the day. Suddenly, as they departed, he was terrified of forgetting. Forgetting every touch and sigh, because now he could finally see the isle for what it was; a snowglobe, a painting inside a museum, a place where everything stands still. He wanted to laugh at the irony, but it was all too much. For he knew he would never step foot on that isle ever again. Out there, where the waves land.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this has been one of the hardest things I've ever written but it's done now and I will now take a 3 week nap. 
> 
> i hope you enjoyed this and if you want to leave a comment or anything that would be very much appreciated because it makes me want to keep writing and assures me I'm not just screaming into a void.

**Author's Note:**

> This idea came to be in a dream and I am being completely serious. Please enjoy this first chapter of a fic that is most definitely going to be the longest thing I've written. Ups and downs to come...Thank you to Gareth for helping me with the title and for making me post this cause I was lost for a moment about the whole thing 
> 
> Comment if you liked it!


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